■ 



£'■..<;•■ • 



H 



UHARLES 






ENRY J3RIGHAM 



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[Memoir and ( P^pers 



CHARLES HENRY BRIGHAM 



MEMOIR AND PAPERS 



JUN I 




BOSTON: 

LOCKWOOD, BROOKS & COMPANY. 

1881. 



Jj of vv 








<o 



Copyright by 
LOCKWOOD, BROOKS & CO. 



CONTENTS 



I. MEMOIR 

II. PAPERS. 

i. Ambrose . . . 

2. Augustine 

3. Symbolism . . 

4. Gregory the Great 

5. Mohammed . 

6. Hildebrand 

7. Abelard 

8. 6"/. Dominic a?id St. Francis 

9. Copernicus 

10. Martin Luther 

11. 6"/. Theresa . 

12. Loyola .... 

13. *S/. Charles Borromeo . 

14. 7#<? Socini 

1 5 . 7%£ Puritans of England 

16. Unitarian Principles 

17. Characteristics of the yews 

1 8 . Christianity the Universal Religion 



59 

79 

104 

I2 5 
144 
164 

185 
208 
231 
244 
277 
299 
323 
349 
368 

39 2 
4i3 

435 



PREFACE 



The literary executors, appointed by Mr. Brigham 
in his will, offer to his friends and the public the 
following volume as the result of their labors. It 
consists of a Memoir by his classmate, Rev. E. B. 
Willson, and such selections from his manuscripts 
and printed papers as would, it was thought, best 
illustrate the range, quality and faithfulness of his 
work and scholarship. He left, printed and unprinted, 
a large mass of materials for more systematic and 
homogeneous volumes, in his critical reviews, his- 
torical, biographical and geographical lectures, 
European and Oriental travels, educational, reform 
and hygienic articles, and sermons, but the rapid 
transition of opinions and the speedy superannuation 
of critical and literary judgments by later investiga- 
tions and maturer thought, render it difficult in 
general to use for present purposes to-day what was 
written even ten or twenty years ago, without modifi- 
cation or cumbersome notes. Probably even in what 



VI PREFACE. 



we have published, Mr. Brigham's own quick eye 
would have detected many things to change or 
qualify. But the object primarily has been to repre- 
sent the man, not opinions. 

With these explanations we contribute the volume 
as another not unworthy addition to the increasing 
treasure-house of American letters and biography. 
The old, old story of character, faith, consecrated 
labor and immortal hope can never pall on human 
interest, but renews itself, like the fresh seasons of 
Nature herself with never-tiring attraction, and gives 
lessons ever new and stimulating to mind and heart. 
His parishioners, his brethren in the ministry, and 
his numerous pupils at Ann Arbor and Meadville 
will recall with gratitude many a word which helped 
them to higher faith and nobler living. 

ABIEL ABBOT LIVERMORE. 



NOTE 



Rev. Charles Henry Brigham laid upon two of 
his friends the double and delicate duty, first, of 
determining whether any, and if any, what, of his 
unpublished papers should go to the press ; and, 
secondly, the " preparation of a brief memoir." 

The two friends living far apart, agreed that a 
memoir could not conveniently be their joint work. 
Thus it has come to be undertaken by one of them ; 
and whether fitly or ill done, the responsibility for it 
rests with him. 

The memorialist would never have thought of 
nominating himself for this office, nor have accepted 
it under any less constraining commission than Mr. 
Brigham's supposed wish. At the moment of taking 
up the pen, he has his eyes upon this sentence : 
" Few men would choose their own biographers well," 
and believes that it contains the truth. 

He is happily able to supplement his own imper- 



Vin NOTE. 



feet sketch with some touches by other friendly 
hands, notably two, which he has set by themselves 
in the form in which he found them standing, because 
they seem to him specially worthy to be preserved 
unchanged, as well on account of the truth and 
justness in them, as of the close relations in which 
the writers stood to their subject. 

E. B. WILLSON. 



MEMOIR 



MEMOIR. 



Charles Henry Brigham, son of Dennis and Roxa 
(Fay) Brigham, was born in Boston, July 27th, 1820. A 
child of good parts, he made easy progress through the 
schools which he attended in his childhood and boyhood, 
and went from the Latin School to Harvard College at the 
age of fifteen, graduating in the class of 1839. 

Of his early childhood we have but a glimpse or two. 
A kinswoman of about equal age with him, remembers that 
when he came on visits to her father's house in the 
country, as he frequently did, " the boy cousins cared noth- 
ing about him, as he could never interest himself in any of 
their sports. The chickens were his chief attraction, and 
very soon he knew every one (although we had a large 
flock), and would know if one was missing. He seemed 
to make a study of them, watching all their ways." 

The memory for which he was distinguished in after 
years showed itself early, laying hold, with swift and sure 
grasp, of the facts of history and experience, and of the 
literary treasures of good books. 

In his literary training, as in his moral, he owed more to 
his mother than to all other masters and models. " To 
her," he wrote when assuming his first pastorate, " I owe 



MEMOIR. 



my ambition to excel, my fondness for study, and mental 
culture." 

One with whom he maintained a warm and close friend- 
ship for almost fifty years, Rev. Amos Smith of Belmont, 
furnishes some interesting facts and pictures, falling within 
this portion of his life : 

He entered, when advanced enough, the Bowdoin 
school, corner of Temple and Derne streets. Its site, and 
the lots which adjoined it, are now covered by the West 
Boston Reservoir. He completed in 1830 the course of 
studies pursued in that school, receiving a Franklin medal. 
He then entered the Boston Latin School, at that time 
kept at the corner of School Street and Chapman Place. 
Horticultural Hall afterwards covered, but the Parker 
House now covers, that space. It was then (in 1830) that 
my acquaintance with him commenced, I having entered 
the school in 1829. I remember him well, as a bright, 
intelligent, wide-awake, compactly-built, rather short, mus- 
cular boy, as fond of fun and play as any of his mates, 
but obedient to the rules of the school, of uncommon in- 
dustry, of great power of perseverance in the studying of 
his lessons, of high scholarship in all departments, and 
greatly liked, as a good and faithful pupil, by all the 
teachers. I suspect that no boy of that school ever com- 
mitted to memory Adams's Latin Grammar more thoroughly 
than he did. Many a time, here in Belmont, he has 
amused me, and called back the old Latin School days, by 
repeating with glib tongue large extracts from that de- 
lectable volume, and especially some of the long "lists" 
with which it abounds, and which at school we had to learn 
by heart. Forty-five years had not erased them from his 
memory. What he learned of Latin from Masters Dilla- 
way, Gardner, Streeter, and the other instructors of that 
school, increased by what he subsequently acquired at 
college, enabled him to read the language with pretty nearly 
the same facility with which he read English. And his 
acquaintance with Greek, though less, was large. He 
graduated from the school in 1835, having ranked through 
his whole career in it, among the highest in his class. 



MEMOIR. 



In college, as in school, he was studious, maintained a 
high rank, and identified himself with all that was best in 
scholarship, and worthiest in character. A high ideal of 
the scholar's vocation held him to a lofty aim and an un- 
flagging patience in work ; and to the end of his life he 
remained a loyal son of the University, watching over her 
good fame with a jealous pride, and justly holding it an 
honorable distinction to have had her culture, and to have 
received her well-won credentials. 

Of the year that intervened between his graduation and 
the commencement of his professional studies, six months 
were passed in teaching in a private school kept by a 
French gentleman in the city of Baltimore, Maryland ; the 
remainder at his father's house in New York. v When at 
home he was not idle. He had no capacity for idleness. 
He read industriously, did some writing daily, and mean- 
time weighed seriously the question of his life's calling, 
which he settled by entering the Divinity School in Cam- 
bridge in August, 1840. 

Although, even after this choice was made, we find him 
sometimes expressing a doubt whether he had chosen 
wisely, and half regretting that he had not pursued another 
vocation, he permits us to see in a "Thought Book," which 
he kept through the year 1840, how steadily and positively 
his mind was setting all this time in the direction of his life- 
long labors. And we must go even farther back to perceive 
fully the unity and consistency of his character, and to. see 
how strongly all the indications had been pointing this 
way from the first. His mother's influence has been men- 
tioned. That of the church is not to be overlooked. 
The family regularly attended worship in the West Boston 



MEMOIR. 



Church, of which Rev. Charles Lowell was the minister 
while Charles Brigham was growing and plastic. Mother 
and son were there together. The apostolic dignity of the 
preacher, his deep seriousness of manner, the exacting and 
inspiring standard of life which he held up to view as the 
Christian ideal, and his pastoral closeness and fidelity to 
the households of which his congregation was made up, 
could not fail to impress the imagination of this quick- 
minded and observant boy. They did impress him deeply, 
and are to be counted among the most undoubted and 
effective of the causes that gave bent to his mind, when 
the time came to fix upon a profession. 

About the time he went to Baltimore he began a careful 
and consecutive reading of the New Testament, making a 
record from day to day of the results, both as to their 
practical lessons and as establishing the character of their 
writings. At the close of the survey, which ran through 
nearly a year's time, he came to the conclusion that the 
evangelical history was trustworthy, and accepted the 
New Testament " as a guide book in the way of duty." 
" If I walk by its precepts I am secure against falling. It is 
a practical book, the most practical I ever read ; eminently 
fitted to be a lamp to my feet and a light to my path .... 
I am going now to enter upon the study of divinity. 
.... I shall ever remember this year as being the occa- 
sion of my first reading of the New Testament." He 
had omitted the "Revelation" from his reading as "a 
book which is perhaps apocryphal, and certainly not con- 
nected with, or subsidiary to, the original design of the 
book in general." 

It was at Divinity Hall, Cambridge, and at the begin 



MEMOIR. 5 



ning of the academic year in 1840, that I first met Mr. 
Brigham. The next three years were passed in almost 
daily and intimate intercourse with him. 

The life of a student in a theological school is, to exter- 
nal observation, monotony itself : a round of exercises at 
appointed hours, quiet study, much writing, much reading, 
solitary walks and walks in pairs, the professor's learned 
lecture and paternal advice, argument and discussion around 
the recitation tables, accidental groupings at odd hours, 
when fun and banter, wit and story rule ; and at other hours, 
when in more serious conference conscience makes in- 
quisition of motive, and young men, not without anxiety, 
forecast the future of their hopes and fears — such, to exter- 
nal observation, is this life of the student of theology. It 
is a great deal more, to be sure, to the eye reading with 
more insight. It is far from monotonous ; it is as excit- 
ing as the career of the explorer in unknown countries, or 
the struggle in the thick of business for the great prizes of 
fortune. 

In the retrospect of that time no figure is more constant 
to my eye or mind than Mr. Brigham's. Foraging 
widely, he was the foremost and most diligent of readers, 
most abundant of writers, faithful in attendance upon all 
prescribed exercises, never backward in debate, no laggard 
at a walk, sincere and serious always in his approach to 
serious themes, and in his treatment of matters of moral 
concern and religious experience never otherwise than 
earnest and reverent. 

Neither at that period, nor later, was he usually credited 
with the religious sensibility which he possessed. This 
was owing not to reserve, nor to any mask of manners 



MEMOIB. 



that he designedly wore, for he was frank to a fault. But 
he was naturally self-assertive, and set a high value on 
scholarly acquisition, and on some personal advantages of 
opportunity, in which he was affluent. With a pretty large 
self-esteem he was sure, therefore, to offend at times by 
assumptions of superiority and all-knowingness. Along 
with this, but overlaid and hidden by it, went a genuine 
humility and an honest self-depreciation, of which abun- 
dant autographic proofs exist. Better proof than self- 
reproaches — of which there was no lack in his private 
notes — he took sharp criticism, when it came from a 
friend and one whom he respected as a competent critic, 
with an unsparing self-application, making no defense of 
himself nor complaint of injustice, though he felt it with 
a wincing keenness. 

After graduation from the Divinity School, Mr. Brigham 
preached in several vacant pulpits from one to eight Sun- 
days each. His longer engagements were in Watertown 
three Sundays, in Greenfield four, in South Boston eight, 
in Taunton six. Having received a call to settle as Pastor 
of the First Congregational Society in Taunton, he ac- 
cepted it on the 20th of February, 1844, and was ordained 
on the 27th of March, the same year. In his letter of 
acceptance he said : " I can only bring you the talents 
which God has given me, a willingness to labor, and a sin 
cere interest, I trust, in the work of the ministry." Such 
words, common in such communications, are no common 
places here. "A willingness to labor and a sincere inter- 
est in the work of the ministry : " proper and modest words 
for the occasion, but not much color in them then ; how 
loaded with meaning and warm with life, as we read them 



MEMOIR. 



now, with the record of a completed ministry of twenty- 
two years throwing light upon them ! Willingness to labor? 
It was an irrepressible, exulting eagerness with him. 
Labor was his delight. No brief spasms and spurts, fol- 
lowed by panting lassitude. It went on steadily from the 
beginning of the year to the end : from year to year. He 
carried about him no air of being hurried or flushed by 
overwork. He was always fresh ; one day was like 
another ; busy, but with room for new claims. He had 
leisure always for social occasions and for recreation, 
as men of industry and method usually have, because, 
mastering their work, their work does not master them. 
To enumerate his preachings, lectures, meetings, pastoral 
visits, school visits, journeys, gives but a faint idea of it, 
though they indeed astonish by their number and variety. 
His labor at his books and pen was not abridged nor 
slurred because he had so many calls abroad. His, love 
of study took care for that. Up to midday, and past — 
to be precise, his rule was "till 4 o'clock, p. m." — he was 
steady at his work-table. He needed less sleep than most 
men, and was a late sitter at night. One of the most tire- 
less of men, both as to bodily activity and mental labor, 
his high praise of a fellow traveller who was his compan- 
ion through some European lands, was, that he was one of 
the best men to travel with that he ever knew, " because 
he possessed so much learning and never got tired." 

Better than any words of mine to characterize or de- 
scribe the fullness of this ministry of Mr. Brigham in 
Taunton, will be the grateful and warm-hearted testimony 
of some of his friends and parishioners, whom he won and 
bound to himself by his manly sincerity 7 , his incorruptible 



8 MEMOIR. 



fidelity to truth, and his generous gift of himself to the 
service of all. It is to be remarked, moreover, that this 
is a character which wore well, as the tributes we cite to its 
worth come late. It is not the enthusiasm of a young 
friendship that speaks. It has run through many years of 
close and familiar contact, and has survived other years of 
separation. The judgment is of one tried in all weathers, 
showing impressions not newly made, but growing deeper 
with time. They are not neutral men who leave such long- 
lasting, and deep-cut traces where they have been. 

One who knew him intimately and had best opportuni- 
ties to discover the quality of his central purpose, says 
of him that from the time of his coming to Taunton in 
1844. a young man of twenty-three years, to his leaving in 
1865: 

His course was an unvarying one of devotion to his 
work as a minister, friend and citizen. When he went 
away not only his own society, but every society of what- 
ever denomination, in fact the whole town, mourned his 
departure, for they felt that the main prop in every good 
work was taken. His opinions upon all subjects, social, 
moral, intellectual and religious were sought, so that he 
was like an oracle. If any vexed question occurred, " ask 
Mr. Brigham," was the current suggestion. His preaching, 
in the opinion of most persons was of the highest, because 
of the truest order. He had decided beliefs upon all sub- 
jects which he treated, and just what he believed, felt, or 
knew to be true, he preached without fear or favor. I 
think he never strove to make "great " sermons, that is, 
high-sounding, sensational, or eloquent, though his style 
was eloquent, I think, for it was true, simple, and con- 
cise. 

As to his every-day life, the writer adds : 

He entered with enthusiasm into every work connected 



MEMOIR. 



with his parish. No duty was ever neglected. Reserving 
full time for his studies, he still had time left for social 
intercourse ; and oh ! how welcome he was everywhere. 
Occasionally his somewhat brusque, abrupt manner would 
offend an over-sensitive person a little, but it was soon for- 
gotten in the pleasure which his presence gave. A careful 
housekeeper would say that some article of food was not 
quite good, and he would echo her own words by saying : 
" No, it is not so good as you have sometimes ; " or if a 
new picture with a bright, gilt frame was subjected to his 
criticism, the frame, its chief fine point, he would perhaps 
say : " It is not so handsome as the wall-paper behind it." 
He might have left that first thing that came into his mind 
unsaid, but he could not say, if he saw no merit, that there 
was any: it was not in him. These are light things to tell, 
but they are the ones which sometimes caused the imputa- 
tion of rudeness. I make a distinction and say they showed 
his truthful, straight-forward manner of speaking just what 
was in his mind .... He was a most unsuspicious per- 
son, believed every one was as single-minded and truthful 
as himself ; and if brought to believe that any one was not 
his friend, bore no malice .... He liked bright young 
people, and they were fond of him. Occasionally there 
were young men who seemed not to like him, but they were 
sure to be young men who were not quite right, whom his 
strong, honest words or manner rebuked. I never knew 
of a bright, upright young man who did not admire him, 
and I think his influence over such persons was admirable. 

Mentioning a family whose house was more a home to 
him than any other, the writer observes that : 

The son and daughter always welcomed his coming with 
delight. When they were young, he would play games, 
solve puzzles, and enter into their youthful sports; and 
when they were older, was always interested in their studies, 
music, etc. Their young friends who collected there 
depended upon him for amusement and instruction. If 
they wanted to learn anything about any subject, it was a 
joke with them to say : " Now we'll wind Mr. Brigham 
up — ask him a leading question — then off he'll go;" 



io MEMO IE. 



and in an . hour they would learn more than in any other 
way. I have often heard one of. my nieces say : " He is 
the sweetest-tempered man I ever knew." He always 
appeared in the morning bright and cheerful, and his 
last words at night were the same. My sister (at whose 
house he spent some part of every summer) would 
say that he was the least trouble in the house of any 
man she ever knew. Everything was just right. Her 
manner of living was simple, few courses of wholesome 
food, and although he enjoyed, what he often had at 
the houses of friends, a luxurious dinner, I think he 
really liked the simplest fare best. The impression was 
sometimes given that his appetite for food was large. 
I think he had a natural healthy appetite for a strong 
man, and nothing more. He had a strong mind in a 

strong body Stimulants of any kind never passed 

his lips. He once had a slight attack of dyspepsia and 
spent six months at my sister's, and it seemed no sacrifice 
to deny himself all but the simplest food, and when asked 
if it was not hard, would say : " What, hard to live on good 
graham bread, boiled rice, and once a day a piece of 
steak?" .... Since reading over what I have written, I feel 
as if I had dwelt too much upon trifling things, and had 
not said half enough of his power and good influence in 
everything, and of how much he was loved. It was my 
privilege often to walk or ride with him when he made calls, 
especially when he came, after he left Taunton, for his 
yearly visit, which I think he could hardly have lived with- 
out. Old persons would greet him as if he were a son 
returned, and I have seen plain; elderly women burst 
into tears, and even embrace him, in joy at seeing him 

again His presence in times of sickness or 

trouble was always welcome. He was always bright 
and cheerful, and if he offered a prayer it was full of 
hope and consolation. His services at funerals were 
such that after he left, many felt as if they could hardly 
bury their dead without his strong words of sympathy 
and comfort. His own emotion would often be so great 
that he could hardly speak. His prayers on such, and 
on all occasions, in church, at marriages, in all seasons 
of sorrow and of joy, were an outpouring from a devout 



MEMOIR. 



heart, of gratitude and love to God for every joy, and for 
strength to bear sorrow. Not so much asking for favors 
or blessings, as giving' thanks for mercies and blessings 
received. His love of nature was intense. He would 
repeat fine poetry suggested by a beautiful scene, flowers, 
or anything lovely or grand in nature. He was full of 
faith in a communion of spirit when separated in body 
from friends. He spent many Thanksgiving and other 
anniversaries at my sister's, and never after he left Taunton 
would he neglect to write and refer to the old times and 
memories both in her own and other families. He was a 
modest man. I think he never wrote or preached for fame 
or popularity. He wrote and spoke what he thought was 
needed for the work in which he was engaged ; and his 
whole strong, healthful body and soul were enlisted. He 
never spared himself. 

In a few passages taken from the letters referred to 
in the above communication, written some years after 
Mr. Brigham had left Taunton for Ann Arbor, his graphic 
pen reveals almost pathetically how deep the roots of his 
early friendships and first pastoral affections had struck 
through this Taunton soil, and how hard they found it to 
take hold and grow again in a new place after transplanta- 
tion : 

Ann Arbor, March 26th, 1871. 

My Dear Friend — I have been expecting in all this 
week to get a letter from you ; and though I have been 
disappointed, I can't resist the impulse to answer the letter 
which has not come. I feel rather in the meditative mood 
this afternoon. The skies are dark, the wind is from the 
East. There are snowflakes flying in the air, and premoni- 
tions of a coming storm. I ouofht to be cheerful and 
buoyant, for this morning at the last meeting for the sea- 
son of the Students' Class (which now numbers 284!), one 
of the Seniors, who has been three years a member of it, 
in a very feeling and complimentary speech, presented me, 
in behalf of the class, with two sets of books, elegantly 
bound, 17 volumes in all, as a testimony of their regard 



12 MEMOIR. 



and appreciation. But in spite of this, it has been run- 
ning in my head all day, that this is the last day of the 
27th year since I was ordained in Taunton, and I have 
been musing on the old home, and the strange changes 
which these years have brought there, and have been 
counting the shadowy procession of the vanishing forms, 
which I shall there see no longer. More and more all that 
life of twenty years seems like a dream, as one and another 
who were parts of it, drop out of its picture. I look back 
upon that experience as something almost disconnected 
with the life I have now, as far apart from this as the Old 
World is from the New. The friends of that time were of 
a different kind from the friends I have now, and every 
one that dies seems to cut another sensitive nerve, and 
weakens sensibility. I used to feel then pained at the 
least sign of the ill-will or the vexation of any friend in 
the Church. Now I do not care, when they call me Anti- 
Christ, a friend and emissary of the Devil, and all sorts 
of hard names. It does not give a particle of pain, and 
seems more like a jest. It troubles my congregation more 
than it does me. I am getting case-hardened to these im- 
pressions of the passing time, and all my emotions are for 
the scenes that are behind, and for the friends from whom 
I have parted. I attended a funeral a few days ago in a 
neighboring town, but I did not feel the occasion, as I used 
to in the former days. I visit some sick persons here 
almost every week, but the visits are rather like those of a 
chance acquaintance than of a pastor. It does not seem 
as it did once that I belong to these people, and that they 
have a right to my sympathy. They are simply men and 
women who happen to know me and come to hear Sunday 
discourse, while I happen to be here. I am not in any 
sense, as Paul says, ' their servant for Jesus' sake.' And 
yet I like these people. I never had in the old parish 
more genuine supporters, and none of them have proved 
to be false friends. But, after all, it will be impossible to 
revive the life that is gone, or to get such attachments 
again as made the charm of the old pastoral relation. I 
was, twenty-seven years ago, ordained pastor of a parish. 
For the last half dozen years I have been only the propa- 
gandist of ideas, only a teacher, and have not wished or 
cared to be anything more. 



MEMOIR. 13 



Ann Arbor, April 9, 187 1. 

My Dear Friend — It is Easter Sunday, the high 
Festival of the Christian year. The sun is shining 
brightly ; the air blows cool ; the birds are singing ; just 
under my window the blue birds are building their nests 
in a hollow trunk ; the bells are ringing for the afternoon 
meetings of the children ; I have held my last interview 
with my Bible Class, have preached an Easter sermon, 
have celebrated the Lord's Supper, with seventy attend- 
ants upon it ; and now sit down to answer your letter. In 
spite of the beauty of the day and the hopeful feeling 
that belongs to the season of opening spring, I have a sad- 
ness which cannot be kept back, and this morning my 
mind was so full of memories that my voice was broken 
and my eyes were dimmed all through the service. I told 
the people, in illustration of the power of death to bring 
the departed near, how constantly the thought of a friend 
of mine, who had recently gone on to his home in the 
world of spirits, came to me as I had been visiting the 
sick and seeing the '"good physician" by the side of the 
suffering; — for there is a good deal of sickness here now, 
and this afternoon I am going to see a sick man, an old 
man, whom I shall probably never see again. It is very 
difficult to make the brethren here appreciate my idea of 
the communion service. The old prejudice clings, and 
they will only see the superstition of the ceremony, and 
not its spiritual meaning 

Do as you please with my books. If you can find 
room for them, and for the desk and other things, where 
they will not suffer harm or be exposed to prying eyes and 
ringers, I shall be content. I would transport them to the 
West, if I could get the feeling that this is home, and that 
I shall be a fixture here. But I often feel as if I ought to 
go back to New England, and wait there the coming on of 
old age. For I begin to feel like an old man, when I see 
that all the workers around me are younger men, and 
realize how few among the Unitarian ministers, who are 
efficient, are before me in age 

The Doctor's* death practically breaks up my home 

* Ira Sampson, M. D., to whose widow this letter was addressed. To 
husband and wife, Mr. Jirigham was " like a brother." Dr. S. is " the 
good physician " of a foregoing paragraph of the letter. 



T4 MEMOIR. 



in Taunton, and I shall now be only a visitor there from 
house to house. I seem somehow now to realize that line 
of the hymn, ' Only waiting till the shadows.' .... But 
I have no spirit to write anything more, and feel brain- 
weary. Remember me kindly to all, to Mr. H. especially, 
to whom I was intending to write to-day, as I always asso- 
ciate him with the communion service here. I have you 
all in my thought, even if the words which express it are 
not very fluent, and wish that eight hundred miles were not 

between our places of abode 

Truly your friend, 

Chas. H. Brigham. 

This, surely, was not coming old age, nor fainting with 
labor, nor yet "brain-weariness." It was simply the yearn- 
ing for old friends, and a softening into a passing mood of 
sadness at the recollection of days busy and joyous, now 
gone by. Long after this his life was brimful of work, and 
his heart was light after the manner of the industrious. 

We select some passages from another letter coming 
from a former parishioner of Mr. Brigham, to show how 
positive, wholesome and enduring was his influence upon 
young men : 



Although I was but a child of ten years when he was 
settled, his influence was near me during the formative 
period of the character, the fixed purpose of which I shall 
always remember him gratefully for. His life, as a young 
man, bore the exemplification of two mottoes that always 
seemed to be impressed upon me by his presence, — Duty 
and Faithfulness. The well known variety of his untiring 
labors, that have made so many men in the profession 
stand aghast at his industry, may best explain the sense of 

his always being alive to the duties next at hand 

Having a place in the Sunday School from my earliest 
recollection, either as scholar or teacher, till the year of 
Mr. Brigham's leaving Taunton, I cannot forget the stimu- 
lus his example afforded in always doing his full duty to 



MEMOIR. 



the extent of that rare thoroughness and faithfulness that 
left an inward censure to any one falling back in a work 
or obligation once begun. Of a zealous student with an 
eager grasp for knowledge from every possible source, it is 
no slight thing to say that he was always in the Sunday 
School, the conference meeting, the committee room, and 
the Bible class, and never late. A punctual care and 
attendance upon these, with a score of other tributary in- 
terests pertaining to the life and welfare of denominational 
affairs, secured a heartiness of cooperation that would 
have been feeble or unknown without his earnest leading. 
. . . The force of continued example works wonders in a 
community .... The result of the first ten or fifteen years 
of Mr. Brigham's ministry was certainly this. His private 
and public efforts as preacher and teacher were many 
times too stimulating, often being so much in advance of 
the common reader. Helpfulness came very largely to 
the young who came to his study for the weekly Bible 
lesson. Fact and authority and information rolled in upon 
us till we were often too full for utterance ; the more timid, 
as I can testify, being awed by the knowledge we had not 
dreamed of. 

Unswerving in exactness of speech and act as we felt 
him to be, the obligations of men and women to the most 
sacred interests of life, were continually shown to be the 
first in importance. If never really intolerant towards 
immorality, a certain contempt for failures in character 
appeared severe, when much latent pity was in his heart. 
Truth, uprightness and dignity were the virtues he expected 
in men, and being very slow to distrust, honest and out- 
spoken always, he had nothing to conceal, believing most 
to be as honest as himself. The loss of confidence in 
men, through the narrow opinions that could not bear the 
light nor the clash that comes from honest difference, I 
never knew to grow into a shadow of enmity, nor to alter 
the manliness of his external courtesy .... Happy are 
they whose religious sentiment finds strength and encour- 
agement in the example of an able and upright man. In 
him the profession was always dignified, if sometimes 
magnified. But the conscientiousness of care over small 
and great things alike showed the man, " faithful in every- 
thing." 



1 6 MEMOIR. 



It was a habit with Mr. Brigham, in which we presume 
very few preachers have preceded or followed him, to 
write out an abstract of every sermon that he preached, 
usually from a half page to a full page in a large ledger- 
like blank-book, whose record now shows the subject of 
every Sunday's lesson, and the main points in its treatment. 
Many abstracts of the discourses of other preachers, who 
occupied his pulpit in his absence, are also recorded. 

After he had carried on for nine years his multifarious 
labors in Taunton, he saw the time come when he might 
fairly claim the recreation of a period of foreign travel. 
He knew by books, and much inquiry, a great deal of the 
lands, the peoples, the treasures of art and literature which 
the other continent held, and desired to see with his own 
eyes its monuments of the past, to taste on its own soil the 
flavor of its historical associations, and to study by per- 
sonal observation and contact the characteristics of the 
nations now occupying its territories. 

On the 23d of May, 1853, he embarked at New York 
on the ship "Constitution," a sailing vessel, for Liver- 
pool. In name this was leisure before him. He did not 
want leisure : did not know how to use it, — as leisure. 
Scarcely was he out of sight of the American shore 
before he was taking the dimensions of his ship, inven- 
torying its nautical equipments and passenger accommo- 
dations, gauging the capacities of its officers, rating its 
seamen, classifying his fellow passengers, describing the 
families, individuals and nationalities occupying the steer- 
age, noting the phenomena of sea and sky, laying his own 
unaccustomed hands to the ropes for exercise, and when 
other resources failed, turning to the ever familiar pen to 



MEMOIR. 17 



indite the daily occurrences and emotions that marked his 
new experience, in journal or letters to home friends, not 
omitting to record — with a little pardonable exultation, 
perhaps — that "all the cabin passengers except Mr. B., 
the Scotchman, and myself, were sea-sick, my Yankee 
chum worst of all." Later, however, he had some experi- 
ence of that as yet unknown malady. 

If he did not find leisure on ship-board, it is not sur- 
prising that he found none after landing. Covering more 
miles in travel by his activity, and seeing more objects, 
and more in those objects, than would almost any 
other, he nevertheless found opportunities to write long 
and frequent communications to his parish, his Sunday 
School, a Taunton newspaper, and to his friends. In the 
summer and autumn of 1853, he explored such countries 
of Europe as time would allow. Near the end of the 
year he crossed from Sicily to Malta and Egypt, ascended 
the Nile to the foot of the Libyan mountains, and on the 
1 8th of February, 1854, set forth from Cairo in company 
with a large and well-appointed caravan of twenty-two 
camels for Palestine, across the desert. He visited Da- 
mascus, and on his return way. Baalbec and Bairout, sailing 
thence on the 20th of April, 1854, for Symrna. The 
Oriental languor never overtook him, nor arrested his 
steps. On the lazy Nile he was alert in every sense, 
ready for an excursion to right or left, as famous places 
attracted him. But though always moving on when 
possible, he was never in such a hurry as to pass by, 
without attention, objects or places worthy of observation. 
Crossing the sandy desert, or toiling through the snow 
that obstructed the mountain paths of Lebanon, he was 
2 



MEMOIR. 



never too worn to take notice of scenery or inhabitants, or 
too indifferent to recall the history which the land illus- 
trated. At the end of his Syrian expedition he wrote that 
he had " never been sick or tired out on a single day of 
the long two months journey." 

Letters from clergymen, travelling in the East and in 
Europe, to their Sunday Schools and congregations have 
become so common as to be no longer novelties; but 
seldom has it been my good fortune to read any so com- 
plete, so graphic in detailed description, and so accurate 
and full in information as are some of Mr. Brigham's 
letters to his Sunday School in Taunton. When in a Cath- 
olic country, he described minutely, and in terms intelligi- 
ble to the young, the modes of worship of its Church, its 
famous church buildings, and the local traditions and his- 
tory of the place from which he happened to be writing. 
In lands where the Greek Church represented the estab- 
lished religion, he noticed its peculiarities and divergencies 
from the Catholic Church in its claims and usages. In 
Jerusalem and Palestine the Moslem faith and its votaries, 
as well as the Christian and Jewish antiquities, and the 
natural features of the country are drawn forth on pages 
as carefully and correctly written as if the) 7 " had been pre- 
pared in his study in Taunton for the printer — lucid 
descriptions, combining the life-likeness of an eye-wit- 
ness's recital, with a learned scholar's competent and 
assured statements.* 

* Some passages from these letters might naturally be looked for 
either in this Memoir or in the accompanying selection from Mr. Brig- 
ham's writings. Unfortunately, while the letters which have passed 
through my hands fully warrant what is said of them above, they are 
written usually on both sides of the thinnest of paper, the sheets are 



MEMOIR. 19 



There were those among his hearers who thought that 
after his return from abroad, the character of his preach- 
ing changed somewhat; that he became more interested 
in extra-parochial labor, and that as his writing and study 
for the press very considerably increased, his engrossment 
with his special work as the minister of his own parish 
became less dominant, and that his preaching was less 
direct and tender, dealing more with subjects of a specu- 
lative, intellectual and universal scholarship. Others seem 
not to have been conscious of such a change. Certainly 
it came from no cooling of his affections for his own peo- 
ple, if it was a reality. Nor was there any falling off from 
his high ideal of pastoral fidelity. More than ever dear 
to him seemed his parish and home after he had seen 
other lands. Without wife or children, those affections 
which usually find their expression, resting-place and satis- 
faction in domestic ties and duties, in his case seemed to 
wed and bind him toTiis place and parish. He was proud 
and happy to belong to them, and to claim them as his 
home. His home thoughts were associated only with them 
and theirs : the words of Ruth might have told his loy- 
alty : — " Entreat me not to leave thee, .... whither thou 
goest I will go ; and where thou lodgest I will lodge ; thy 
people shall be my people, and thy God my God ; where 
thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried." His 
yearning fondness for this first scene of his labor in the 
ministry shows itself in his desire to be buried in the 

unpaged, and by passing through many hands, some of which wei"e not 
careful to preserve their orderly arrangement, they have become 
almost hopelessly dislocated and mixed ; so that the task of making 
them available for use proved too severe a strain upon the eye-sight, 
and taxed too heavily the time at my command. 



MEMOIR, 



beautiful enclosure in which stands the Taunton church : a 
desire, however, which for reasons deemed controlling by 
those with whom the decision rested, could not be com- 
plied with. 

Early in 1865, perhaps earlier, the officers of the Ameri- 
can Unitarian Association had their attention turned to 
the great and growing State University of Michigan at 
Ann Arbor, as a field favorable for bringing liberal theol- 
ogy into contact with western minds. When the man was 
looked for to represent this theology and faith, Mr. Brig- 
ham was an easy and a natural selection. The opportunity 
was one that appealed strongly to his scholarly tastes, his 
consciousness of adaptation in many important respects to 
the teacher's office ; while his interest in the faith of his 
fathers and in the creed of his own well -tested and 
matured convictions, and his persuasion of the great 
worth of the Unitarian interpretation of religion and life 
to the free and forming West, went heavily into the scale 
in favor of the enterprise. The only hindrance was the cord 
of triple strength that held him to his place and people 
in Taunton. After consideration and some delay, he came 
to see it to be his duty to accept the post, provisionally. 
He would try it, and if it proved that he was the man 
wanted, would stay. That his society might be disembar- 
rassed of all reference to his future plans, however, he 
resigned his ministry on the 23d of April, 1865. His 
resignation was not accepted, but leave of absence for six 
months was granted, it being voted that his salary should 
go on meanwhile. He declined the salary, but consented 
to the continuance of the connection for the time specified. 
Finding upon trial that it was his duty to remain, he 



MEMOIR. 



renewed his resignation of his Taunton ministry on the 
26th of February, 1866, and it was accepted. 

By this transplantation Mr. Brigham found himself in a 
social climate in many ways different from that to which 
he had been accustomed from his youth up. Born in Bos- 
ton, the chief New England city, half his forty-five years 
spent in it or in its near neighborhood, the other half in a 
large parish situated in the old Plymouth colony, with a 
history running back to 1637, where the flavor of the old- 
est New England life lingers if anywhere, he had all the 
typical New Englander's prejudices in favor of the ancient 
order, the arts, conveniences and culture of an old com- 
munity, with its long -established institutions. Distaste 
for the raw, crude and mixed social elements which go to 
the compounding of the people of a new country, was 
strong in him. Of course he knew he should find what he 
did find, most congenial associations under the shadow of 
the broadly-conceived, well-endowed, nobly-manned and 
equipped University, to which already great numbers of 
the most promising young men of the Western States were 
flocking for instruction. His mission was to these young 
men. He scarcely looked beyond them as he surveyed 
the new field before him. He was to become the pastor 
of a church in Ann Arbor, it is true; and he would be 
conscientiously faithful to every duty he undertook to per- 
form in its behalf, as it was his nature to be in whatever 
he did. But he never expected to feel again the fresh 
ardor and the kindling hope with which he had entered 
into his first youthful ministry, nor would he believe that 
any people could ever be to him what those whom he was 
leaving behind had grown to be in twenty years. Perhaps 



22 MEMO IB. 



this feeling was too strong in him, and was too much in- 
dulged, and produced a needless languor of interest on the 
parish side of his work. But it was a natural feeling 
under the circumstances, and for such as he was. He was 
not by nature a pliant man, especially in regard to his 
intellectual tastes, and, as he considered them, necessities ; 
it was not easy for him to shape his habits and demands 
to new conditions. He was not one whom, on the whole, 
it would seem easy to transplant to an unaccustomed soil. 
Yet he went into his new work with no half-heartedness. 
He had enthusiasm in it, and his enthusiasm increased as 
he went on. He was pleasantly and greatly stimulated by 
the presence of a group of eager inquirers after truth, which 
he at once began to draw about him from the students of 
the University. No obstacle or discouragement to the 
freest access to them was for a moment thought of by the 
distinguished President and able Professors of the Univer- 
sity, who rather welcomed the presence and influence of 
so ripe, full, and honest a mind among them. This was 
not exactly like the general habit and policy of orthodox 
New England ; and it was better. He felt the bracing air 
of this free and courageous thinking ) it was tonic and 
wholesome, and he breathed it with a rejoicing conscious- 
ness of strength and health, girding himself at the same 
time to meet the claims now made upon him for his best 
thought. His roots took hold. His work extended. 
He was wanted to help at many things, to lend a 
hand at many constructive businesses where his trained 
mind was capable of rendering valuable service, and he 
was always ready if the thing to be done was good. His 
times and employments were all fore-assigned : just as much 



MEMOIR. 23 



the hour for recreation and society as that for study or 
lecture ; his assignments were not made as an ideal 
to be feebly aimed at, but as appointments to be kept, 
only to be departed from for cause. The amount of 
work which his"" method and his industry enabled him to 
accomplish, was astonishing. The secret of it was that 
there had to be no whipping himself up to labor for which 
he was reluctant. He rejoiced in it. Therefore his work 
was done well ; not only in time, not only in full measure, 
but in quality it was thorough. It will show more clearly 
if we particularize. The eye sweeping the whole broad 
field at a glance, does not see what it covers. 

Here was first, his society. It was new : or rather as yet 
it was not. Its organization was to be his care. Its con- 
stituency, composed of elements unused to coalesce, were 
to learn the possibility of a common worship, of unity of 
spirit, of co-operating diversities. No long history of a 
memorable past, no honored traditions of loyal genera- 
tions were here to hold a church together, when antagoniz- 
ing opinions and conflicting tastes should kindle strife and 
threaten cleavage, till the strain should be over. They 
were to find in him, if at all — in the tone of his spirit, the 
quality of his manhood and his interpretation of truth — the 
bond that would make their union possible and their 
growth sure. How it proved is best shown by quoting the 
words of Mr. James B. Gott, who, more than an eye-witness 
and recorder, was a living member of the body : 

Mr. Brigham's ministry here was a constant and steady 
sunshine. You could not designate any discourse as being 
pre-eminent, for there were no contrasts. He never wrote, 
nor delivered, to my knowledge, a poor or unfinished dis- 



24 MEMOIR. 



course. They were always fair, impartial, logical and 
exhaustive .... He was never sensational. His courses 
of lectures in the church on representative and historical 
men connected with the Christian Church, and on the 
religions of the world, were very instructive and interest- 



In regard to Mr. Brigham's work and influence: when 
he came here he was the pioneer of the Unitarian body in 
this place. There had been a few discourses delivered in 
the Court House before he came, but no organization, I 
believe. Mr. Brigham perfected the organization, and 
meetings were held in the Court House for a time. The 
new Methodist Church was completed soon after, and 
through the aid largely of the Unitarian Association, the 
old Methodist Church was secured for the Unitarian 
Society, and services have since been held there. .... 

Mr. Brigham was transparently honest. No one could 
have in him an ally for trickery or questionable practices. 
Those who came to his church in expectation that their 
bad morals were to be glossed over, soon found their mis- 
take. 

All the while he rightly understood that the main reason 
for his being in Ann Arbor was that there was the Univer- 
sity with its students, many hundred intelligent young men 
gathered from widely-separated communities, and destined 
on the completion of their studies to be scattered again 
yet more widely. The end, to be sure, which he kept in 
sight as that with which he was specially charged, was to 
do missionary work on this spot and in the region round 
about : it was the dissemination of Christian truth as he 
held it, and as it was generally held by the Unitarians. 
Of the means at his command by which to accomplish that 
end, he accounted a hearing by so many of these students 
as he could interest in his word, his chief reliance. At 
the renting of the pews in the church when the society 



MEMOIR. 21 



first occupied its building in February, 1S67, it was "voted, 
that not more than sixty pews should be rented in all, the 
rest being free for the use of the students of the Univer- 
sity." 

In November, 1865, he began a course of Sunday after- 
noon exercises, for college students especially, more than 
forty joining the class which he thus instructed. Taking 
up first the Gospel of Matthew for exposition, he gave a 
series of essays the following year on the character and 
authenticity of the books of the New Testament, which 
were followed by general conversation and discussion. 
This year the class numbered over sixty. The next year, 
with about the same number, he considered the doctrine 
of the Future Life, reading essays upon the teachings of 
the Scriptures concerning it. This Bible class continued 
to receive his most careful and thorough teaching during 

o OS 

the whole time of his residence in Ann Arbor. He gave 
ample time and study to preparation for it ; wrote out his 
papers fully; carried inquiries on through successive exer- 
cises, laying plans for weeks and months forward. One 
year he had eight essays on Proverbs, nine on the Law of 
Moses, and eight lectures on Palestine ; while the whole 
number belonging to the class went up to "two hundred 
and sixty-four, from more than one hundred and eighty 
different towns and cities in twenty States." Another year 
the whole number was two hundred and forty-nine ; yet 
another, three hundred and twenty-four. In nothing that 
he did, did he regard himself as effecting so much in the 
line of missionary work, as in the teaching of his Bible 
class. 

" Mr. Brigham's influence with the students," says Mr. 



26 ME MO IB. 



Gott, "in disseminating liberal views cannot be estimated. 
He was the teacher of a large Bible class which assembled 
at half-past nine each Sunday morning to hear his essay, 
and to ask questions. Many of them at the close either 
went to other churches or to their rooms; some remained 
to attend church services ; but all over the land are scat- 
tered the members of Mr. Brigham's Bible class ; many of 
them editors of secular journals; and I have no doubt 
that the liberality of many such journals in the West is the 
natural outgrowth of this Bible class." 

Rev. Mr. Shippen, in a memorial sermon preached at 
Taunton, presents a pleasant and suggestive picture of the 
harvest that has come of this widely scattered seed. He 
journeyed with Mr. Brigham across the State of Michigan 
to attend a Chicago Conference. "On the same day's 
journey came forward in the train a young physician, set- 
tled in an inland city, gratefully testifying of the valued 
instruction of the Bible class that has enabled him, amid 
his fresh studies of the new science, still to cling to his 
faith in the living God. One hears of some young man 
eager to plant a new church of the liberal faith in the 
Northwest, or perhaps a pillar of strength in some strug- 
gling church already started, and discovers, as the secret 
of his enthusiasm, that he was a member of that Bible 
class. One hears of a young editor on the Pacific Coast, 
giving his secular paper a tone of liberal religious faith, 
and discovers, that he also graduated at Ann Arbor and 
listened to this preacher. In the editorial service of the 
Northwest, with deep satisfaction, Mr. Brigham counted 
thirty of his pupils." 

In November, 1870, he formed a Bible class of ladies, 



MEMOIR. 27 



which he taught in private houses, numbering in all twenty- 
seven, the first year, and increasing afterwards. Weekly 
social gatherings were held in private houses, or in the 
vestry of the church during some or all the winters of his 
residence in Ann Arbor, and were largely attended. 
Throughout the community and among clergymen and 
people of all denominations, by his character, breadth of 
learning and industry, he acquired a continually increasing 
personal respect, and commanded for the before unknown 
and much misrepresented doctrines of his Church a far more 
respectful attention and examination than they had been 
accustomed to receive. Appointed by Governor Bagley a 
member of the State Board of Health, for which position 
he had shown admirable fitness by his interest in sanitary 
questions and his knowledge of them, he wrote and 
labored in this field, as in all others, as if it had been a 
leading study among the subjects of his investigation. In 
this, as in everything he undertook, he was a worker. Sin- 
ecures were not for him — would not know what to do 
with him. If offered any place for the honor of it merely, 
he would disappoint expectation by directly finding some- 
thing to do in it, if that was possible. Common schools, 
institutions of education of every grade, measures to pro- 
mote temperance and social benefit in all kinds, had all 
his steady and efficient aid. 

He was blamed sometimes for making his parish work 
secondary to his efforts to be heard and felt by the young 
men of the University, to his lectures at Meadville, and 
perhaps to missionary work at large in the West: not 
only secondary some would say, but placing it so far after 
the others that he seemed not to take a warm interest in it. 



28 MEMOIR. 



thus neglecting an opportunity to strengthen the Church 
he represented in that place. An intelligent parishioner 
already quoted, who says, to be sure, that he was " a mis- 
sionary to the students in the University more than a pas- 
tor to the Unitarian Society," yet intimates no felt want in 
the latter sphere of duty, and testifies to his perfecting the 
organization of the society, and to his very strong hold 
upon his hearers by his preaching. Answering also, as he 
did, faithfully and conscientiously every claim upon him for 
the usually appointed services of a pastor, making many 
warm friends among his parishioners, and respected by all, 
it seems but just to allow such a man, on the ground, never 
lukewarm, never sparing himself, conscientious in. the use 
of his time and powers, to have been the best judge of 
how his labors should be apportioned and bestowed. 
Another might well have preferred other methods, possi- 
bly. He knew where his own strength lay, and very 
probably chose wisely. 

Next to his interest in the students at Ann Arbor, was 
that he took in the students preparing for the ministry at 
Meadville, Pennsylvania. They were fewer, but they were 
recruits for the ranks of his own profession, of which he 
had had a large experience and cherished a very high 
ideal. His appointment as non-resident Professor of Ec- 
clesiastical History and Biblical Archaelogy in the school 
at Meadville, in 1866, foUowed close upon his removal to 
Michigan. " He gave lectures twice a year for ten years," 
writes President Livermore " embracing in all more than 
one hundred and fifty lectures upon Ecclesiastical History, 
Palestine, the other Bible lands, the laws of Moses, the 
Psalms, the book of Proverbs, the book of Job, and the 



MEMOIR. 29 



books of the New Testament, besides many miscellaneous 
addresses, in the school, the church, and before the Literary 
Union." 

We may fitly add here what President Livermore has said 
more generally of his traits of character, his acquirements 
and labors in other professional and non-professional fields, 
as they display the sources of his power, and of the wide 
and lasting influence which he exerted upon the young 
men who came under his instruction during their training 
for the ministry, and whom he never failed to inspire with 
a genuine respect for his integrity of mind and his high 
and rigorous moral standard, and with a cordial admira- 
tion for his great knowledge and industry. 

We deeply feel his loss in Meadville In tem- 
perament he was a happy combination of English sturdi- 
ness and bottom, with the mercurial vivacity and quickness 
of the French, from whom he was descended on his 
maternal side. This conjunction gave him at once rapidity 
and endurance in his work. 

Few of our ministers swept a wider field of accom- 
plishments or effected as much in solid work as our de- 
parted friend. 

A critic and lover of music, enjoying wit and humor, 
sincere in his social sympathies and friendships, stalwart in 
his profession and denomination, an omnivorous reader of 
books and periodicals, a keen observer and high-toned 
judge of current events in Church and State, loyal always 
to the highest principle, and indignant at every wrong and 
outspoken in denouncing it, his word and his deed were 
uniformly cast into the scale of Christian progress, liberal 
but not lax ideas, and the universal welfare of mankind. 

Without being eminent as a specialist in any one 
department, he was able and distinguished in his wide 
grasp of scholarship in history, biography, politics, ethics, 
theology, literature and the arts. 

Where shall we be able to match his encyclopedic 



30 MEMOIR. 



attainments, or find one, at least, in our clerical brother- 
hood, at once so exact and trustworthy in details, and at 
the same time so comprehensive in his outlook ! 

Not naturally endued with a brilliant or poetic imagi- 
nation, nor predisposed to an easy faith, his strength lay 
in a solid understanding enriched by choice culture, and 
in unswerving convictions of moral and religious prin- 
ciples to which he adhered in all circumstances of life. 

We shall miss him much and mourn him sincerely in 
many quarters, in our church and denominational gather- 
ings, our literary associations, our periodicals, in our 
sanitary and other reforms. He has left his mark on 
many young men whose influence will not soon pass away, 
but extend in widening circles into the future." 

Mr. Brigham highly enjoyed his visits to Meadville. 
The welcome which he received from its cultivated and 
hospitable society, as well as the quickening contact with 
the professors and students of the Theological School, 
refreshed him, and gave him the only recreation he knew 
how to enjoy, change of employment. 

Though he sought not the honors of authorship in any 
extended work, he wrote much — few more — and much 
that he wrote had solid merit. He contributed abun- 
dantly to the higher periodical publications of the Unitarian 
denomination, the Christian Examiner and the Unitarian 
Review, in elaborate articles, and furnished both to them 
and to the newspapers almost numberless critical notices 
of books, some short, some quite extended and full. He 
wrote for the North American Review, the New American 
Encyclopedia, and for the Journal of Health. A member 
of the Oriental Society, the Philological Society, and the 
Social Science Association of the country, elected also a 
member of the German Oriental Society (which he is said 
to have considered the greatest honor ever conferred upon 



MEMOIR. 3 1 



him), he wrote, as he read, in amount almost past belief, 
on the most varied topics. "He was fond," says the 
editor of the Unitarian Review, "of gathering up unusual 
and out-of-the-way facts bearing on the religious doctrines 
and usages of remote localities and peoples, many ac- 
counts of which he contributed to the editorial department 
of this Review. Besides this he prepared several elaborate 
and extended papers which appeared over his own name. 
Those on the Samaritans, the Jews in China, and the 
characteristics of the Jewish race, are among the most 
valuable that occur to us. At the time when his health 
gave way he was planning an article on Japanese life and 
literature, for which he awaited a consignment of books 
from Japan." 

We presume upon the indulgence of one of his friends 
(whom we cannot reach with a request for permission), to 
cite a passage here from a private letter written soon after 
the death of Mr. Brigham, to the Editor of the Unitarian 
Review. It is Prof. E. P. Evans, of Michigan University, 
who writes : 

Florence, April 9, 1879. 

The death of our friend Mr. Brigham, 

although not wholly unexpected, was a great shock to us. 
We knew him so intimately and prized him so highly that 
his departure has left a painful vacancy in our lives. He 
was, in many respects, the most remarkable man I ever 
knew, a full man in every sense, in the vastness and 
variety of his learning and in the breadth and universality 
of his sympathies. He was interested in every branch of 
knowledge, and could enter into and appreciate alike the 
aspirations of the medieval ascetic and the aims of the 
most radical of modern scientists. In addition to his 
intellectual vigor, there was something grand in the robust 
moral character of the man. Even those who had no 



32 MEMOIR. 



sympathy with his ideas did reverence to his earnestness 
and uprightness. A gentleman in Michigan once re- 
marked to me that there was to him something awe- 
inspiring in Mr. Brigham's sturdy and uncompromising 
integrity. 

I wonder what disposition is to be made of his MSS. 
He left much behind which ought to be preserved in print. 
He was singularly devoid of literary ambition for one who 
was capable of achieving so much in this direction. He 
delivered courses of lectures at Ann Arbor and at Mead- 
ville, which ought to be preserved in some permanent 
form. He was convinced, as he once told me, that he 
could exert a wider influence and do more good by writing 
for the journals of the day, than by putting his thoughts 
into books, although he admitted that the latter kind of 
literary labor would probably secure for him a more en- 
during reputation and greater posthumous fame. 

Though he worked easily and with a free will that made 
toil a pleasure and not a task-work, no constitution even 
of iron could stand the strain at which he held himself to 
it, while sedentary habits and the neglect of imperative 
sanitary laws were also impairing his strength. Perhaps 
he knew it, but thought some warning more decisive than 
he had received would tell him in time when to desist. It 
came, but not in time to allow him to retrieve his lost 
health. It was not only peremptory but final. He 
preached for the last time in Ann Arbor, Sunday, May 13, 
1877. 

There were a few successive days in May, 1877, says 
his friend, Mr. Amos Smith, on which the weather was 
like the hottest days of July or August. That Sunday was 
one of them. He told me that he never was so overcome 
with the heat, — that he never, in fact, so really suffered 
from it while preaching, as on that 13th of May. But I 
have no doubt that part of this suffering was owing to the 
state of his own system. If he had been in his usual 



MEMOIR. 33 



health, he could have endured it as easily as he had done 
many times before. He told me that he had not been 
feeling well for several days. It was unfortunate that just 
at this time, while feeling thus ill, there was a more than 
usual amount of literary work of one kind, or another, 
waiting to be attended to by him, so that he was kept hard 
at work at his desk day after day. Then again, most un- 
fortunately for him, that period of extreme heat, — almost 
unprecedented for a date so early, set in. The illness, 
the extra work and the heat coming together, were too 
much even for him. He managed, however, to carry 
through the forenoon services without experiencing any 
serious discomfort. When the hour for the evening service 
arrived, he had become very ill, but resolved to fight his 
way through it, and did so. 

After a wakeful and restless night he rose, though feel- 
ing very ill, and succeeded in partially dressing himself. 
But the fight was over ; his strength was broken ; his reso- 
lute will was overpowered. He became unconscious. The 
physicians, when summoned, could not but take the most 
serious view of his case : perhaps looked with but little 
hope for his return to consciousness. He rallied, how- 
ever ; became able to travel, and returned East to the 
house of a sister in Brooklyn, N. Y., where he gradually 
improved so far as to read, write occasional letters, travel 
short distances, and visit a few friends ; and he entertained 
the thought of a possible resumption of his work at Ann 
Arbor. But to his physician and friends it was but too 
evident that this was a vain hope. The recurrence of ill- 
ness became more frequent and prostrating. The utmost 
care and kindness of friends could not stay the falling 
stroke. On the 5th of September, 1878, a fresh attack 
laid him helpless, in which condition he remained till the 
19th of February, 1879. when the scene closed. 
3 



34 MEMO IB. 



Mr. Brigham did not marry. Yet the society of sensible 
and pleasing women attracted him strongly, and he sought 
it as one of his chief pleasures. When he needed social 
recreation, he looked for it in its purest and most perfect 
forms in domestic life. Never a taint of reproach is known 
to have sullied or touched his good name. " Although a 
bachelor," writes a parishioner in Taunton, already quoted, 
" he was very fond of woman's society. His manner was 
always frank and cordial, never flattering or delusive." 
" He was received," says Mr. Gott of Ann Arbor, " into 
the homes and society of all denominations ; he was a wel- 
come guest at the family board and in the family circle ; 
yet there was a kind of dignity and reserve about him 
which never let you feel assured that you were quite in 
contact with him. He was not a favorite with the ladies. 
One who had seen much of him said to me, 'I am never 
so near Mr. Brigham as when he is in the pulpit, and I in 
my pew.' " 

In paying this tribute to the memory of a friend, I would 
not be blindly eulogistic ; but I cannot, in justice to him, 
forbear to say that he was a man not only likely to be mis- 
understood in some things, but very open to certain 
misunderstandings which told against him unfairly. Peo- 
ple thought him so easy to read, that they read him 
carelessly ; half read him ; not half. He was easy to read, 
as they thought, but too often they only read the few large 
letters and lines of the title page, — his manners, — which 
gave a very inadequate and, in some respects, misleading 
idea of the book. And the hasty judgment which such 
readers tossed off now and then, gave pain to friends who 
had read him more attentively and closely. 



MEMOIR. 35 



For example. We have said that he had large self- 
esteem. This caused him to assert himself more forwardly 
than those of another temper, but with an equally high 
estimate of themselves, might have done, or might have 
thought becoming. He was not unconscious of this man- 
ner. He began to detect in himself when a young man 
" a tendency to be positive, dogmatic and decided. I am 
too apt by a sentence to settle very doubtful questions ; 
too apt to give my own opinions as if that settled the case. 
This defect, I have no doubt, leads in a great measure to 
that abruptness noticeable in my manner of speaking and 
reading." Thus he lowered himself, as many of large self- 
esteem do not. And, withal, he was modest in his 
self-valuation. Some who thought they understood him 
did not know it, and would have said it was not so : be- 
cause he had not tact. He had as little as any man I ever 
knew who was so wise. The art and grace of approach- 
ing another's personality acceptably, with a skillful defer- 
ence to his prejudice, or mood, or special pedantry, he 
entirely lacked. He had not in his make the fine instru- 
ments of a sympathetic perception, by which to read 
sensitively character in its more timid and delicate organi- 
zation, its secret affections and motions : did not perceive 
when he trenched upon a self-reserving pride or privacy, or 
stop aloof from the door of a soul's penetralia. With a 
clumsy, frank unceremoniousness, he dropped down upon 
the tender places of another's conceit or feeling without 
warning, blunt, dogmatic, impervious to the silent resent- 
ment, or good-natured retort which he sometimes received 
in return. But if he gave offence at the beginning by his 
assumptions, he was before long found to be thoroughly 



36 MEMOIR. 



genial, kind and chivalrously honorable, and his seemingly 
self-exalting comparisons were soon recognized as not so 
much the claim of superiority, as the guileless overflow of 
an exuberant and joyous consciousness of wealth and a 
glad exhibition of his treasure, without a thought that he 
could be humiliating the listener. 

He was never the envious detractor of the learning of 
others. He honored genuine scholarship wherever he 
found it. His enthusiasm for men of great and good 
learning was as hearty as his criticism of the pretentious 
was pungent and unsparing. His pride took the form, 
not of showing that the justly famous thought highly of 
him, but of showing that he honored them, and knew how 
to appreciate them. His boast was of his advantages and 
opportunities, not of any distinction they had reflected on 
himself. 

The infrequency with which he volunteered extempo- 
raneous speech before public assemblies, or even in the 
larger gatherings of his professional brethren, I am sure is 
rightly ascribed by Rev. Dr. Bellows, in his discourse at 
Mr. Brigham's funeral, to his modesty and self-distrust. 

He was very transparent. He knew not how to hide 
himself. Conscious of being habitually under the guidance 
of a pure and honest purpose, he had small occasion to do 
so, and never seemed to think of it. His guilelessness 
and freedom from suspicion were almost childlike. "I 
like men who are open," he wrote in his Thought-Book, 
"who have no concealment. This is my own nature, if I 
know anything of myself. I like to be on good terms 
with everybody. And if there are any over whose success 
I rejoice, it is those noble souls who carry their hearts in 



MEMOIR. 37 



their hands. God bless G. ; he has his minor faults, but 
his nature is of the noblest." 

Some would have said that he was a self-indulgent man, 
because a lover of good dining and of creature comforts 
beyond what strictly comports with the ideal character of 
the self-denying and spiritually-minded clergyman. 

He certainly did not affect indifference to the good 
cheer of a bounteous table. But they who suppose that 
high or free living was a necessity which controlled him, 
or that it had a foremost place in his thoughts, or that the 
prospect of missing a sumptuous entertainment and find- 
ing a plain and frugal meal in place of it would seriously 
disturb his equanimity, were far from knowing him. We 
have already cited some words of a Taunton friend, who 
knew his tastes and habits in this respect if anybody did, 
and who, it was seen, warmly protests against such a mis- 
taken judgment of him. Many another one, privileged to 
be his host, would gratefully testify how easy a guest he 
was to care for and to content. He partook of the profuse 
luxuries of the rich and open-handed, with a keen zest and 
a healthy enjoyment, but he never avoided the simpler fare 
o^ the board at which a just economy compelled a narrow 
range of choice, or pained the hospitality that did the best 
it could with limited means, by word or look that implied 
discontent. His activity of mind was incessant, his body 
vigorous and full of life. The working brain must be 
nourished as well as the laboring muscle. His appetite, 
hearty and healthy, was not gratified at the expense of his 
intellect, which it did not stupefy or becloud, but, judging 
from his extraordinary mental energy and restless dili- 
gence, to its repairing and support. 



38 MEMOIR. 



After a social evening entertainment in New York, when 
once at home on a vacation, we find this note in the 
" Thought Book : •" " There is one custom, however, on such 
occasions which, if I should ever attain the dignity of a 
housekeeper, I certainly would have corrected. I mean 
the custom of passing round eatables. This stupid idea, 
which has its origin in desires wholly sensual, is worthy to 
be banished from the house of every decent citizen. In the 
first place, are there not three meals, a number amply suf- 
ficient, and more than sufficient, to satisfy the appetite and 
support life comfortably? Why do we need a fourth meal? 
For nothing else than to pamper the appetite with useless 
and pernicious luxuries. Immediately before sleeping, we 
all know that eating must be extremely hurtful : more 
especially when the articles are of a rich and delicate kind. 
Yet strange to say, and true as strange, everybody thinks 
that he must fall in with this senseless idea, and we see 
everywhere the evening parade of eatables to a greater or 
less extent luxurious." 

Mr. Brigham lived a bachelor. We pass the term " vol- 
untary celibate," applied to him by Dr. Bellows without 
challenge. But we cannot accept as sufficient proof of his 
indifference to the satisfactions of domestic privilege and 
the happiness of having a home of his own the fact that 
this friend never heard that he had " a single temptation 
or disposition to change his bachelor state," or that he 
never knew of his having " a desire to yield up the satis- 
factions of learning to any domestic yearning." He had, 
we are persuaded, and the persuasion rests on grounds we 
think substantial, at times positive and strong yearnings 
for the home society and sanctities. Had it happened to 



MEMOIR. 39 



him to assume, under fit and favoring circumstances, the 
obligations, and to experience the felicities of domestic ties, 
to which there was no barring incapacity or disinclination 
in his nature, he would not,* we believe, have been found 
always preferring the study to the nursery. He would have 
been neither insensible to the supreme earthly blessing 
flowing from family affections, nor unaffected by their bene- 
ficent influence upon life and character. He was made 
to be even a completer man than he was. We presume 
that he knew that, and knew what would have helped to 
make him such. In 1852, he wrote to a friend : "This is the 
first day of my ninth year of service in this ministry, and I 
am frightened at the retrospect. The awful pile of manu- 
scripts realizing almost the old suggestion of the 'barrel,' 
the children grown to be men and women, the families 
removed and broken up, the parish calls counted by 
thousands (I have made six thousand in these eight years), 
the long list of marriages, the longer list of deaths, all 
the simple common-place phenomena of a country minis- 
ter's life, what a varied, strange picture do they make ! I 
know a little of your old complaint, and confess for the 
occasion that it makes me feel rather blue. And yet, I 
have not got tired of the ministry, have you ? With all its 
drawbacks I love it, I enjoy it, I would not change it for 
any other. I get low-spirited sometimes with the feeling 
that I am growing rusty, dull, and hopelessly selfish ; but 
something or other comes up to clear the atmosphere, and 
it is all right again. One thing I envy you, and that is 
your enjoyment of a home. It is vastly convenient, but I 
am convinced that it is not good for man to be alone. 
This boasted freedom is a humbug after all." And a 



4° MEMOIR. 



month later to the same : " O ! domestic martyr, rival of 
that mythical old matron, whose children abounded within 
the narrow compass of a shoe, I pity and I envy you. The 
nox child greets with filial confidence.* Lonely I tread 
the desert land, and can only send love and kisses to 
the children of friends." He found the most congenial 
society, that to which he always turned spontaneously as 
most refreshing and wholesome, not in the club house, but 
in the family circle. He had a livelier sympathy with 
children than was generally known, and understood 
them better, perhaps, than he did any other class of per- 
sons. He was mirthful and full of animal spirits, and the 
children acknowledged him to be of their guild. His 
enjoyment of the society of pleasing and cultured women 
has been already remarked, and it was one of the most 
constant and obvious traits in his character. 

No attempt will here be made to analyze Mr. Brigham's 
mental traits and powers, or to estimate the quality of his 
intellectual and professional work. This is most admira- 
bly and sufficiently done in the discriminating, just and 
affectionate funeral discourse of Rev. Dr. Bellows, which 
follows this memoir. I will only mention one or two traits 
of which I happen to have had opportunities of close 
observation in the days of our young manhood, which linger 
still as salient points in the memory of that time. 

* I do not presume to say what this sentence may mean. A whim- 
sical pretence of pedantry often substituted a Latin for an English 
word in Mr. Brigham's conversation, or correspondence with his inti- 
mate friends. I venture to interpret his reply to the father of a 
family complaining a little of loss of sleep caused by the night cries 
of his children, thus: "The child at night greets [grieves — cries] 
with a filial confidence that his calls will be heard by parental ears, 
and answered." 



MEMOIR. 41 



He had a great love of humor ; his fund of spirits was 
seldom low ; his sense of the ludicrous rarely slept long. 
These qualities, combined with his extraordinary memory, 
made him a most agreeable companion for a walk or a 
social hour. He was a sincere, though not an indiscrimi- 
nate, admirer of Dickens. It was only necessary to 
indicate the point at which a recitation from this author 
should begin. He would take it up at the designated 
place, and with an astonishing verbal accuracy, especially 
not missing the least of those little felicitous turns of 
expression in which lay and trickled the fun, would go on 
for pages through the descriptions of Dick Swivelier's 
grotesque gravity, or shrewd Sam Weller's observations on 
men and things, inclusive of the domestic crises in the 
Weller family. His hilarious jesting was sometimes fol- 
lowed by twinges of sharp regret, and called forth 
expressions of sincere penitence from his sensitive con- 
science ; for his conscience was very true and tender, his 
self-arraignments were frequent, strict and honest, and his 
merry moods were balanced by a sincere and unfailing 
reverence. He was serious and altogether earnest when it 
was befitting to be so. No untimely levity marred the 
dignity of his speech or manner when grave subjects 
were under consideration, or weighty duties were to be 
enforced. His religiousness was simple, natural, healthy, 
and of his central self. It was never as to an unwelcome 
or an irksome office that he turned from social freedom 
and pleasure to any occasion demanding sober thought or 
sober utterance. It was not he who sought to give to the 
conversation in which he participated a turn from high 
themes and deep questions to mere pleasantries and empty 
witticisms. 



42 MEMOIR. 



His mental processes must have been very swift without 
being loose and inexact. His rapidity of reading was 
inconceivable to common minds. He took the new book 
or the fresh Review aside for a little while, and in an 
incredibly short time came back to report what he had found 
in it, and to give an opinion of its merit. We doubted if 
he had had time to get through it in any fashion, much 
more, time to possess himself intelligently of its contents. 
We proclaimed the doubt. " Question me," he would 
answer, "on any part from the first page to the last." We 
were compelled to admit at the end that he had borne the 
examination triumphantly. And he had seized the mean- 
ing. It was his own, henceforth, ready for use. His 
knowledge did not encumber him, nor befog his sight. He 
had passed a judgment on the worth and truth of what he 
had read. His thought was free, firm and strong, as well 
as nimble. His acquisitions were assorted and available. 
He could pack his discourses close with fresh, apposite, 
suggestive instruction as few could. 

One likes to know what he himself thought of his much 
reading. At the age of twenty-one and a half years he 
wrote : " From an observation of my own mental habits I 
am sometimes inclined to think that a great deal that I get 
over is transitory to me. I find it often difficult, even 
immediately after I have read a passage, to recall it. Cer- 
tainly the words escape me : — usually all but the principal 
meaning. It is physically impossible, I know, for one to 
recollect much of what one reads ; it may be doubted 
whether one would not find it better to think more and 
read less. A few ideas, daily pondered over, would, we 
might think, do more to enlarge the mind, than stores of 



MEMOIR. 43 



lore gone through, whether rapidly or slowly." We meet 
with the same thing again in his notes, months later, 
in nearly the same form. He thought that the demands 
for the composition of sermons, when he should be actu- 
ally at work in his profession, might correct this dispropor- 
tion between his reading and his thinking, as it probably did 
in some degree. I cannot but think that he was right in 
his judgment that he read too much: — unless we conclude 
that the result of reading less would have been, not more 
thinking, but less, which is possible. His reading no 
doubt stimulated his mind, but whether it strengthened it 
may be questioned. Self-compelling, sustained, indepen- 
dent, wilful, concentrated thought, I suppose, was not a 
characteristic habit of his mind. If it could have become 
that, it must have increased his power, and would have 
made him, if possibly less learned, greater. But this is 
perhaps only saying that if he had been, not himself, but 
another, of different natural forces, he would have sur- 
passed himself. 

Yet, maybe not. How few have filled so large a pat- 
tern of manhood, of scholarship, of noble integrity, 
of ministerial work and loyalty. Who has reached so 
many, so healthily, leaving such memorable and perma- 
nent impressions ? How far he has sent abroad his 
instructions ! How sure the seeds of his sowing, wherever 
they spring, to heal, strengthen, and help humanity ! 

Before laying down the pen, I cull a few sentences, or 
fragments of sentences, from his note-books and diary, 
which, while they have no immediate connection with each 
other, or with the topics already treated, have some value 
as throwing side-lights upon the man and his labors. 



44 MEMOIR. 



They all date earlier than the age of twenty-six or twenty- 
seven, it must be observed, after which period he discon- 
tinued the habit of self-reference in his mere business-like 
journal of appointments and engagements, except during 
the year of his travel in foregn lands : 

Jan., 1841. [At home: vacation.] "My mind to-day 
has been in a state of doubt and hesitation, and I have 

not felt very well either My doubts have been in 

some degree the result of an apparent conflict between 
duty and inclination. This time the subject was my duty 
as a theological student and a poor man, and my inclina- 
tion as a Unitarian. By entering at this institution (Union 
Seminary), I might save some two hundred and fifty 
dollars per annum in money, and receive, perhaps, better 
instruction, besides being constantly at home and under 
family influences. On the other hand, by remaining at 
Cambridge I contribute to keep up the Unitarian School, 
I live in a more congenial atmosphere, and I have greater 
advantages for study than I should have here." 

Nov., 1841. "It makes little difference what feelings 
others have towards me to my own mind ; but I am, of 
course, as all are, sorry that there should be any ill-feel- 
ings between members of a Divinity School. We are none 
of us perfect : far from it. But as an individual I am not 
conscious of malevolence towards any one. I may have 
disagreeable manners, I do not believe that I have an 
unkind heart." 

Feb., 1842. [At home : on vacation : dissatisfied with his 
supposed want of success in addressing a Sunday School.] 
"I believe that by constitution and habit, I am much 
better fitted for the Law than any other profession." 

Feb., 1842. [After a church "conversation" meeting.] 
" I suspect, however, that I asserted some things rather 
positively, and arrogated a great deal to myself. I was a 
little too conscious of my own superior knowledge, and 
talked faster than was necessary or proper." 

Feb., 1842. Still at home : vacation: he mentions it as 
a rare fact that he passed an evening at home. 

Feb., 1842. "In the afternoon I went up to take leave 



MEMOIR. 45 



of my Sunday School, which I did as well as I could. But 
I am always disappointed at my own efforts in speaking to 
children. I always feel as if I ought to be silent. My 
forte in speaking lies in heated argument." 

Mch., 1842. [Has returned to Cambridge.] " Somehow 
or other much of my theological zeal has cooled. My 
mind has taken a more practical direction. I have not so 
much desire to improve my store of knowledge, as to 
enlarge my store of religious experience." 

Mch., 1842 "I read, however, a portion in each 

of the five books I am now reading;" [that is from the five 
books in the same day.] 

May, 1842. " How few are there, even of my most inti- 
mate friends, that read my heart ! How few are there that 
give me credit for half the virtuous desires that move my 
breast." 

Dec, 1842. After severe self-depreciation, he is certain 
that he has "the natural gifts for a preacher. It is in me 
and it shall come out." Yet, three weeks later — 

Dec, 1842. " I begin to think that study and theology, 
rather than practical matters, are my forte." 

Feb., '43. " I have a most extravagant tendency to find 
fault. Nothing satisfies me, and everybody else sees this. 
I appear conceited, and I believe I am conceited." 

July, 1844. " I wish now to take moderate views, but 
not conservative views," [apropos to a sermon he had just 
heard, and deemed hurtfully conservative.] 

July, 1844. " There remains now but one more step for 
me to take to make my settlement complete." [Marriage, 
no doubt.] 

July, 1844. [At Horticultural Exhibition.] " I attended 
far more to the show of ladies than to the show of 
flowers." 

Sept., 1844, "I feel, too, that the influence of my 
present life is not what it ought to be ; that the influences 
of my present position are bad, — that I cannot be so 
religious as I ought in the midst of this society. I must 
be at the head of a family before I can be a religious man. 
.... I feel the want of some friend more and more, — 
some sympathy upon which I can rely." 

Sept., 1844. " Her children, unlike most ministers' 
children, behaved well, and were perfectly orderly." 



46 MEMOIR. 



Sept., 1844. "It is the second good sermon I have 
written." 

Sept., 1844. [Six months after ordination.] "I have 
become a proverb for bluntness." 

Nov., 1844. "The dinner was a very feeble luncheon, 
but it was just what I wanted." 

Nov., 1844. [Thanksgiving. Finding a trembling 
tongue, and starting tears in the pulpit.] " I believe that 
my nature is not altogether hard and unsentimental. 
There is more feeling in it than I am generally willing to 
allow. I try to assume an indifference which does not 
belong, to me, and get the credit for carelessness, when in 

reality I am all interested As for writing a real 

sermon, it is a thing I have never done. Were it not that 
I look before instead of behind, by nature and constitu- 
tion, I should despair of ever becoming a preacher. I 
dined at Mr. -s. We had the usual amount of Thanks- 
giving cheer, but I did not enjoy it. I was not among 
those near and natural friends with whom I could feel per- 
fectly free. I longed for my comfortable quarters at Uncle 
B.'s, and the genial group around his fireside. I had, too, 
during the day a vague feeling of melancholy, partly 
caused by bodily illness, partly by a feeling that I was not 
doing my duty faithfully. I don't know that I ever passed 
a more lonely Thanksgiving." 

Apr., 1846. "A minister in a parish, I think, is placed 
in an eminently favorable situation for judging impartially. 
He sees every variety of character, and numbers men 
of all shades of opinion among his personal friends. I 
do not know any single prejudice or animosity which is 
likely to warp my judgment." 



MEMOIR. 47 



[From the Christian Register.] 
BY REV. JOSEPH H. ALLEN, 

A CLASSMATE OF MR. BRIGHAM. 

A person of average capacity for work would be aghast 
at the industry of those years, — sermon-writing, preach- 
ing, visiting, work in outlying districts, with ea°:er interest 
in all professional associations, or local matters, or pro- 
jects to promote morals and intelligence, and with the 
running accompaniment of his prodigious breadth of read- 
ing. It seemed as if he had literally read everything that 
was worth reading in all the tongues worth learning. 
Without being a book-worm either, for he cared jwst as 
much about out-door matters, wrote one of the best articles 
on forest-trees, gave some of the best descriptions of cities 
and countries he had visited, was acquainted by hearing 
of the ear with all the best music, of which he was very 
fond, was on hand at all important public occasions, and 
always seemed absolutely at leisure for any chance conver- 
sation or companionship. 

His incessant and facile industry in writing has been 
invaluable in many a close-pressed editorial experience, 
and few names were better known or more welcome to the 
readers of our best reviews. He was one of those men 
whose ability to "turn off" work of excellent quality indif- 
ferently in almost any given direction seemed positively 
inexhaustible ; while at the same time he seemed wholly 
free from the vanity which is the besetting infirmity of 
smaller men of letters, so that he could join in hearty 
praise of another man's work which he thought better than 
his own, and could take, in frank good-humor, a criticism 
or an emendation which another man might resent. These 
are traits which will be better appreciated by " the craft," 
but they are also very significant of the real quality of the 
man. 



48 MEMOIR. 



Mr. Brigham was a sharp critic himself, and not always 
a sympathetic one. This sometimes showed itself in his 
literary essays and his critical notices, which were incredi- 
bly numerous and invariably- good. It showed itself also 
in a certain impatience at the turn and tone sometimes 
taken by the fresher thought of the day. At one time, 
this looked like a lack of sympathy and hopefulness 
regarding the religious movement we are ourselves em- 
barked in. 

It was a happy event for Mr. Brigham, as well as a 
valuable gift to a wider circle, when the American Unita- 
rian Association fixed on him to occupy the post offered 
at Ann Arbor. To him, judging from his correspondence 
at that time, it was the beginning of a new mental life. A 
certain sense of weariness and routine fell away at once, 
and o^ne felt a fresher vigor and hope in the tone of his 
writing, which was the breathing of another climate. And, 
with his characteristic energy, he was for some years busy 
in taking in the features and capabilities of his larger field. 

He gave solid dignity and respect to his work, and 
through it to the good cause, by the amplitude of his learn- 
ing and the mass of his mental industry. The opportunity 
of Unitarianism in the West, as a movement of religious 
thought, must be quite another thing from the fact of those 
twelve years' labors. Once for all, any possible stigma of 
narrowness, conceit, shallow radicalism, was forbidden to 
rest on the name he represented. A scholar of the widest 
range of reading, a man of the world, familiar with art and 
foreign travel, a sober and somewhat conservative thinker, 
a man of letters, of untiring industry, a writer and speaker 
of more than average eloquence and force, — these quali- 
ties were recognized and applauded in every form in which 
the recognition and applause of man has its value. 

Perhaps the central and most significant of the tasks he 
did was the instructing, in yearly courses, of classes from 
the University; ranging, in the course of the year, from 
one hundred to two hundred and fifty in number, consist- 
ing mostly of young men who have made his name, word, 
and work familiar (it is not extravagant to say) in every 
part of the Mississippi Valley, and who are themselves a 



MEMOIR. 49 



whole army of pioneers in the higher and freer Christian 
culture of that great and superb country. 

Mr. Brigham's health had been failing for some years, 
more plainly and alarmingly in his friends' eyes than his 
own; when, a year ago last May, he was attacked, near the 
end of his working year, by symptoms that made it clear 
that his real task was done. The months of waiting since 
have had less of pain and more of enjoyment than might 
be feared. A year ago he was still almost buoyant in the 
hope of returning to his place before another season. But 
the cloud soon thickened ; and for several months he has 
been so completely disabled for all part in the world that 
his final departure must have been a welcome release. 



ADDRESS AT THE FUNERAL OF MR. BRIGHAM, 

BY REV. HENRY W. BELLOWS, D. D. 

We stand here awed by the presence of Death, but 
emboldened by the faith of Christians. It is not only a 
faithful Christian, but a Christian minister, whose dust 
we are committing to the rest which his undying spirit, 
never to be consigned to any grave, does not need. It is 
not in the scene of his labors, not among the attached 
people of his old flock at Taunton, nor the young men at 
Ann Arbor and Meadville, that this last service takes 
place. Were it so, there would be warmer and more 
tender witnesses of this ceremony. But dear kindred are 
here, and brother ministers of his own special faith, and 
this sympathizing congregation, all of whom know his 
claims to respect, and to an honored memory and a burial 
worthy the value and importance of the life it closes and 
marks with a monumental stone. 

Complete, and full of labors and services, as the life was 
of the man and Christian minister over whose dust we are 
hanging, his death, long threatened and at last welcome, 
affects me as something premature. With a frame vigorous 
and sturdy, full of sensuous strength, and commanding 
for its weight and size, he exhibited none of the signs of 
physical weakness or waste which so often accompany 
4 



50 MEMOIR. 



clerical or scholastic pursuits. You would have said, to 
look upon him for the thirty-five years of his professional 
career, that seldom had a man been made whose physical 
constitution and build better fitted him to endure the 
labor and strain of life, or who would more naturally have 
pursued, not a scholar's nor a minister's life, but a life 
of affairs, of secular pursuits and prepossessions. No 
marked delicacy of organization pointed him out as a man 
of intellectual and spiritual tendencies. Full of blood 
and of hearty appetites, he was outwardly built for the 
enjoyment of the things of time and sense, and for the 
ordinary average tastes and interests of practical life. It 
always surprised and gratified those who knew him from 
his youth up that, against all the temptations and tenden- 
cies of his exacting physical nature, he became so early 
self-consecrated to intellectual, moral, and spiritual pur- 
suits. His love of knowledge, his devotion to learning, 
his sanctification to Christian ends and aims, were no pro- 
duct of nervous sensibility, debilitated senses, or delicate 
health ; but, rather, in spite of superfluous physical vigor, 
strong appetites, and an immense natural enjoyment of 
his corporeal being. We do not wonder when pale, feeble, 
and delicate persons, unequal to bodily labors and un- 
suited to active and tumultuous worldly pursuits, give 
themselves up to books, to hopes beyond the world, to 
the intellectual and the spiritual life; but when the mus- 
cular, the full-blooded, the sensuous, turn from the things 
of the flesh and the world, to consecrate themselves to 
unworldly, to scholarly, and to spiritual pursuits, we be- 
hold a grand triumph of the intellectual and moral over 
the carnal nature, and see with what a strength of grasp, 
with what a force of consecrated will, with what an intel- 
lectual bit and spiritual bridle, the soul has made the 
rebellious body and senses serve the desires of the mind. 
Our departed brother, whom I have known from his boy- 
hood up, was not a man who despised or neglected the 
body or the things of this life. He had too vigorous and 
hearty an enjoyment of them, and was too manly and 
frank, too social and too free from all pretension and all 
sympathy with ascetic habits and voluntary self-denials, to 
be wholly safe from the perils of his natural aptitudes 



MEMOIR. 5 1 



and sensuous sensibilities. But who was freer from all 
corporeal vices ? Who used his physical vigor more 
unstintedly for intellectual labors and professional ser- 
vices? Who has exhibited a 'more absolute devotion to 
the pursuit of knowledge and truth, or maintained a more 
undeniable and unquestioned sanctification of heart and 
conscience to his sacred calling and his ministerial office ? 
It would have been so easy for him to have slipped into 
weaknesses that would have compromised his clerical stand- 
ing and his Christian repute, that his unsullied life and 
spotless record, as a minister and a man, deserve something 
more than ordinary recognition and praise. Without with- 
drawing from the world, he lived in it, yet above it. With 
a rebellious, because hearty, physical frame, he kept all the 
more perilous tendencies of his body under, and never 
brought his self-control, or his moral and spiritual repute, 
under the least doubt or into the smallest shame. 

From his youth up, he had a noble and never-quenched 
passion for books ; his appetite for them was more mas- 
terly than any physical appetite, strong as that might be. 
To read them more widely and abundantly, he acquired 
ancient and modern languages, and devoured classical, 
and romantic, and domestic, and foreign literatures, with 
an in appeasable hunger and a prodigious power of digestion. 
He was almost equally at home in ancient and modern 
learning; in theology, philosophy, science, and fiction; 
in what was happening in the most distant universities 
and schools of thought, and in the latest of our American 
colleges. No book of any importance escaped his notice, 
and no distance from intellectual centres, and no engross- 
ment in ministerial cares, ever seemed to baffle or delay 
his reading and studies. And what he acquired, he was 
as ready and as skillful to impart as he was quick to digest. 
He never sunk the uses and the practical bearing of his 
learning and reading in any selfish curiosity or egotistic 
devotion to his own culture. He read to learn, and he 
learned to instruct and enlighten others. Without the 
demands of the professor's chair or the exclusive claims 
of an academic office, he was truly a professor at large, 
who knew more of many departments of learning than 
men set apart to a special study, and called to teach it 



52 MEMOIR. 



exclusively, usually know of their single branch. At Ann 
Arbor, where he passed eleven happy and most useful years, 
in the capacity of the minister of a small flock, he gathered 
about him all the more aspiring students of all aptitudes 
and varied professional aspirations, who sat at his feet as 
a sort of Admirable Crichton, — a universal encyclopedic 
master of knowledges, who could be safely consisted on 
any theme, and who, if he did not know all about it him- 
self, knew exactly who did. It is said that he was a sort 
of untitled, unsalaried, universal professor in Michigan, 
finding the titled professors of the college ready to advise 
with him, and lending to many, perhaps, the only adequate 
companionship they could find in the neighborhood. His 
influence in the college, and over the rising youth of that 
populous university is said to have been quite unprec- 
edented, considering that he held no office, and was only 
the minister of a small flock in the town, of a form of 
faith not at all congenial with the prevailing theology of 
the place and the college. 

I have myself had the opportunity of observing the 
industry, the variety, the competency of his labors as visit- 
ing lecturer at the Meadville Theological School ; he 
would hurry to the spot from Michigan to Pennsylvania, 
and in a fortnight, lecturing sometimes twice a day, give a 
long course of lectures on ecclesiastical history, or dogma- 
tics, or philosophy, each crammed with the results of the 
largest reading, and each bristling with facts and illustra- 
tions, making every one tell upon his point, and exciting a 
strange wonder and admiration among his pupils that "one 
head could carry all he knew." 

What a rare and precious office an American scholar 
fills, especially in our Western world, some of you must 
duly feel ; but we have so few entitled to the name that it 
is impossible to think of all the knowledge and scholastic 
taste, acumen and critical ability, to be buried in Mr. 
Brigham's grave, without sorrow and sharp regret. Hardly 
have we left to us one man of so wide and general read- 
ing, or any whose tastes for books and learning was so 
genuine, long-continued, unaffected, and hearty. And he 
was so generous in the use of his pen, in our reviews, our 
religious newspapers, and our conferences, that his readi- 



MEMOIR. 53 



ness, promptness and activity will be sorely missed in all 
our affairs. 

Mr. Brigham was for twenty years of his life pastor of 
the Unitarian Church in Taunton, and expended a cease- 
less activity in the pulpit, the lecture-room, the town, and 
the parish, in clearing up, widening, and strengthening 
those enlightened views of the Christian religion which he 
firmly held. He was too widely-read, too deeply-taught, 
to be a partisan or a denominationalist. His acquaint- 
ance and his sympathy with all educated and earnest 
minds in all schools and branches of the Christian Church 
made him catholic in the, truest sense of that word. He 
was not an enthusiast in his hopes, or a fanatic in any- 
thing. He seldom saw the golden prospects ahead that 
cheer the eyes of those who are not candidly observant 
of the present and dispassionately studious of the lessons 
of the past. Indeed, his readiness to do justice to all 
sides made him a poor sectarian and a lukewarn denomi- 
nationalist. He thought few men to be well acquainted 
with the grounds of their own opinions, and valued their 
hopes and confidences accordingly. He was himself, 
moveover, with all his vigor of body and right to the cour- 
age of his careful opinions, modest and not over-confident. 
With a copious and ready vocabulary, he was slow to 
speak in our public assemblies ; and, while one of the 
most voluble and spontaneous of talkers at the fireside 
and on the private walk, he was more silent and quiet in 
our public conferences than could be accounted for on any 
theory except that of a certain habitual distrust of un- 
studied and impulsive speech. 

He had a superlative method in the use of his time, 
and the order of his studies ; knew just where he was 
going to be and just what he was going to do, months 
ahead ; and had his reading, and his writing, and his visit- 
ing hours laid out with a precision and a method that 
were admirable, and sufficiently account for his vast 
knowledge of books and his immense productiveness in 
manuscripts. To this he added a memory of the utmost 
tenacity. A rapid reader, he was slow to forget, and had 
his treasures at the readiest command. His preaching 
was eminently strong and suggestive, the subject always 



54 MEMOIR. 



having a certain masterful laying out and an exhaustive 
treatment. And his prayers were copious, devout, and 
varied. Perhaps he had not that contagious and sympa- 
thetic temperament so much craved in the pulpit in our 
day. But he lacked nothing else, and was really, for so 
learned, so frank, so common-sensed a man, singularly 
spiritual and devout in his pulpit work. 

He was a Christian — almost an ecclesiastic — in his 
tastes. He loved the church and its worship, its music 
and its symbols. Had he lived in the Middle Ages, he 
would early have repaired to a monastery, to enjoy the 
privileges of its studies, and its freedom from worldly 
anxieties ; nor would he have despised its good cheer. 
Indeed, he was one of the few products of our time and 
our ranks in whom the old spirit of monkery was revived 
and represented. A voluntary celibate, with not a single 
temptation or disposition to change his bachelor state, 
that I ever heard of, he lived a life of books and old learn- 
ing in the midst of an age that reads little that is not wet 
from the press and reeking with a superficial novelty ; and 
without one known desire to yield up the satisfactions of 
learning to any domestic yearnings or any public ambition. 
He was a singularly unambitious person for a man of his 
powers and capacities. He has left manuscripts which 
almost any other man of his scholarship and standing 
would have long ago thrown into print. He wrote almost 
as much as he read ; but either his standard was too high 
and his learning too great to make him overvalue or even 
duly estimate his own work, or else he was strongly 
uncovetous of public recognition and applause. He never 
seemed at all desirous of a city pulpit ; never grasped at 
any office ; never entered even the academic scramble for 
professional honors. With his strength and his knowledge, 
and his blameless life and character, even a little personal 
ambition would have carried him higher, and made him 
more conspicuous ; but perhaps he chose wisely, and with 
a better self-knowledge, in prizing most the calm and 
studious life, and drawing his happiness from his books 
and his use of them in his secluded spheres, or his pulpit 
and his lecture-room. Yet he was a lover of good fellow- 
ship and good people, and, although he had his limitations 



MEMOIR. 55 



and peculiarities, a welcome visitor in scores of homes in 
the West. 

I have been so long and so widely separated from him 
in distance — without ever having- had a close intimacy with 
him — that I have no right to speak of his more private 
views and his spiritual graces. But he always impressed 
me as a thoroughly good man, whose moral and religious 
principles were deeply and inextricably wrought into his 
personality; without hypocrisy or guile; without over-val- 
uation of himself, or over-confidence ; ready and generous 
in his recognition of all the gifts of others ; without jeal- 
ousy or detraction ; a tremendous worker, and one willing 
to submit to any amount of intellectual drudgery; ever 
conscientious in the use of his time and opportunities. 
He was perfectly free in his studies and afraid of no 
depth or breadth of inquiries, but was a Churchman as 
well as a Christian, a man who knew the invaluable and 
immense services the gospel had rendered, and read it in 
its historical form with genuine heartiness, but with the 
full knowledge and appreciation of all the results of 
modern criticism. 

I do not doubt that he had, all the most precious hopes 
of a believing Christian, and that his last two suffering 
years have not only tried, but purified and exalted his 
faith. I never have heard of a murmur or a doubt of God's 
wisdom and goodness as coming from his lips. He has 
had a most useful, a highly respected and an exceptionally 
scholarly career. Labor and thought have filled his days. 
He has had a rare and glorious chance to impress himself 
upon hundreds of American youth, as a scholar and a 
Christian teacher. He made full proof of his ministry, in 
a strong parish, for twenty years, and stamped himself into 
one large New England town, where Christianity and civil- 
ization will long acknowledge his influence and remain 
under his spell. After a long life of almost uninterrupted 
health, he was called suddenly to two years of slow decline 
and painful invalidism, — which may have been not less 
useful to him than his health had been to others. He 
carries a stainless memory into his grave, whither he went 
in calm Christian faith and confidence. He lacked 
nothing except the highest form of domestic experience, — 



5 6 MEMOIR. 



a great lack, indeed, — and that has been made up to him 
in part by the assiduous cares and devotion of his kindred, 
who must now value unspeakably the privilege of having 
ministered to this wifeless, childless man, and this life-long 
solitary of the library and the pulpit, in these last trying- 
years of his decay. 

I will not close without, recalling the fact that it was 
from my old church in Chambers Street that young Brig- 
ham went, thirty-five years ago, into the ministry, and that 
I preached his ordination sermon — the second I ever 
preached, but since so many — at his settlement in Taun- 
ton ; that I officiated at the funerals of his honored 
mother, too early called away, and his long-lived and won- 
derfully preserved father, who died so recently among you ; 
and that I feel it would be more natural for him to speal' 
at my burial than thus for me to be speaking at his. But 
God knows the times and the seasons ! For our worn 
friend a sweet rest is already prepared. More than the 
joys of books and libraries are already opened to him ; for 
he reads the face of his God and Father • he enters the 
communion of Christian scholars of all ages, and sees 
them and not merely their works ; he is near the fountain 
of all Christian theology, — the beloved Master and Head 
of the Church ; he is witness to the truth that here we know 
in part and prophesy in part, but that where he is they 
know even as also they are known ; for when that which is 
perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done 
away. Faithful brother, we dismiss thee to thy well- 
earned promotion to heavenly seats, to better society, to 
fuller knowledge, and to higher intellectual and spiritual 
joys ! Minister of Christ, ascend to thy Master ! Child 
of God, go to thy Father's arms ! Christian brother, join 
the fellowship of the family in heaven ! Those of thy 
mortal blood will long weep for thee ; but they rejoice to- 
day that thou art free from all mortal bonds, and confident 
of thy welcome in the spiritual world thou taughtest others 
to find, not forgetting the way for thyself. Farewell. 



PAPERS 



AMBROSE. 59 



ST. AMBROSE, BISHOP OF MILAN. 

Arbogastes, a Roman general, who at the close of the 
fourth century, made war upon the Franks of the Rhine 
country, in an interview which he had with their chiefs, 
was asked if he was a friend of Ambrose. From motives 
of policy he returned an affirmative answer. But they 
quickly replied, that now "they did not wonder at his con- 
quering them, since he enjoyed the favor of a man whom 
the sun would obey, if he should command it to stand 
still." 

This second Joshua was not the leader of any armed 
host, but was the spiritual dictator of kings and generals. 
And when one considers the rare union in his life of eccle- 
siastical dignity and spiritual faith, how he could humble 
the mightiest by his simple trust, — and make of an 
emperor first a penitent and then a saint, the miracle 
might seem more fitting of him than of the leader of 
Israel's hosts. 

No city in Europe has been more the centre of violence 
and insurrection than Milan, the capital of Lombardy. 
Lying as it does on the frontier between Germany and 
Italy, in every struggle between these hereditary foes, it 
has been the principal sufferer. Down from the slopes of 
the Alps invading armies have poured into its gates, 
devouring its substance and deluging its streets with blood. 
In civil commotion, nobles and people have fought hand 
to hand in the great square before the cathedral. The 
plague has there destroyed, and its ravages has given the 
groundwork of the most touching and exciting of Italian 
novels. 

The Milanese are a restless and rebellious people. But 
there is one thing which characterises their city more than 
its turbulence, and which outlasts all its misfortunes, the 



6o AMBROSE. 



deep-rooted reverence of the people for their patron saints. 
The altar where Borromeo once ministered still gathers its 
myriads, even in the hottest siege. And even when the 
enemy are furious in the streets, the Church of St. Am- 
brose is crowded with penitents who implore the aid of 
the holy bishop's bones. Separated by an interval of one 
thousand years, still these two saints are joined in the popu- 
lar memory. And in the same religious service, the prayers 
of the one and the hymns of the other, are chanted by 
white-robed choirs, and shake with their rolling harmony 
the myriad statues of that wonderful work of art, the 
great Cathedral of Milan. 

We leave to a future lecture the sketch of that most 
lovely and apostolic of all Catholic saints, Charles Borro- 
meo. If you would learn the spirit and beauty of his life 
and influence, read Mansoni's story of the Betrothed. It 
is the more ancient guardian of Milan who gives a theme 
for the present lecture, — the model bishop, as we might 
call him, of the fourth century, — a man of large mind, but 
of larger heart, a prince in dignity, a child in simplicity, — 
firm before men, humble before God, close to keep 
the faith of the Church, — yet charitable beyond the 
measure of his age, — prudent in action, fearless in word, 
— kind to the poor, candid to the great, respectful to all, — 
capable of becoming great, preferring to do good, yielding 
the possession of temporal power to the hope of spiritual 
usefulness, — pleased, not by eulogy, but gratitude, — giv- 
ing up the praise of the successful scholar for the praise 
of the faithful pastor. 

The city of Treves, which the conversion of Jerome and 
the possession of the Holy Coat have made famous alike in 
ancient and modern days, is honored more truly by being 
the birthplace of Ambrose. His father was the governor 
of that province of Gaul. But more propitious still for 
the future eminence of the son than his noble birth, was 
the omen which happened one day as he lay an infant in 
his cradle, in a court-yard of the palace. A swarm of bees 
came flying round, and some crept in and out of his 
opened mouth, and finally all rose into the air so high that 
they quite vanished out of sight. This prodigy, repeated 
from the infancy of Plato, seemed to prophecy another life 



AMBROSE. 6 1 



like Plato's. And from his very cradle Ambrose seemed 
destined to authority and sanctity. 

Ambrose was educated first at Treves and afterwards at 
Rome for the profession of law ; and his abilities in this 
direction were so marked that his friendship was courted 
by the most distinguished men of the city, as well Pagan 
as Christian. Of one of these, Symmachus, he was after- 
wards the opponent in controversies of singular vigor; by 
another, Probus, the prefect of Rome, he was early intro- 
duced into political life, and finally from one office to 
another raised to that of governor of all the northern prov- 
inces of Italy. As he departed for Milan, the metropolitan 
city of the provinces, the parting words of Probus to him 
were, "Go thy way, and govern more like a bishop than a 
judge." They were prophetic. Hardly had he arrived at 
Milan, when the Arian bishop, who had held the office 
twenty years, was removed by death, and all the quarrels 
that could arise in a distracted Church were inflamed into 
fury. The Catholics and Arians seemed equally to forget 
that they were Christians. As governor of the provinces 
Ambrose believed it to be his duty to moderate ecclesiasti- 
cal as well, as civil disturbances. He accordingly went to 
the church where the council for choosing a bishop were 
assembled, and endeavored to make peace among them. 
In the midst of his harangue, the voice of a child was 
suddenly heard, exclaiming, " Let Ambrose be bishop." 
It came like the voice of an angel to the excited throng, 
and all shouted at once, Catholic and Arian together: 
" Ambrose shall be our bishop." It was rather a novel 
method of election, and a somewhat singular choice, since 
Ambrose was not a professing Christian, and had never 
been baptised. But they saw at once that the only way of 
reconciling their disputes was to take a new man, who was 
obnoxious to neither party, and whose individual excel- 
lence, more than his special experience, fitted him for the 
office. 

Ambrose himself, however, thought it a choice not fit to 
be made, and adopted various contrivances for proving 
this. To show how inhuman he was, he had several crim- 
inals brought up and tortured. But the people were not 
to be deceived by this, and when he attempted to get out 



62 AMBROSE. 



of the way, they had a guard set upon him, and baffled all 
his stratagem. His appeal to the emperor to be released 
from a duty which he knew nothing about, was answered 
by the command of the emperor to accept it, with the 
comforting assurance that he considered it a very excellent 
choice. He was defeated at all points, and was obliged, 
most reluctlantly, to submit to the infraction of the canon 
laws, and with the great seal of baptism, to be transferred 
at once from the temporal to the spiritual administration 
of the State. On the 7th of December, 374, he was con- 
secrated as bishop. And to the Church in Milan this is 
still the great day of rejoicing. Ambrose was thirty-four 
years when he was ordained to this high and responsible 
office. He assumed a task for which he had no previous 
preparation, and no original taste. But with such zeal and 
fidelity did he discharge his trust, that the twenty-two "years 
of his administration were unrivalled in their fruits of 
benefit by the episcopal life of any that had gone before 
him. He died in the full maturity of his powers, before 
the weakness of age had come on, or his natural force had 
abated. Yet the longest life could scarcely have done 
more to vindicate the rights, to consolidate the power, and 
to secure the reverence, not only of his own, but of the 
universal Church. If his administration was in a less 
stirring time than that which came immediately after it, he 
used and directed its incidents so that they gained substan- 
tial importance. Without secularizing the Church, he 
used the spiritual power, so that the influence of the 
Church was felt upon the State. Without violent persecu- 
tion, he eradicated the heresies that he found troubling the 
rest of the people. He carried into his religious councils 
the prudence, the skill, and the calmness of the wise states- 
man, and he gained the respect, if he could not get the 
adhesion, of his adversaries. We can easily follow out his 
influence in every direction, for while he is nowhere very 
brilliant or peculiar, he is still a true bishop, ready for 
every duty, thoroughly furnished to every good work. We 
will first consider his influence in the political affairs of 
the Empire. 

The Western Empire, in this period, was tottering to its 
fall. The Gothic hordes in the hills of the North were 



AMBROSE. 63 



gathering themselves together for their marauding onset. A 
succession of weak and wicked emperors had not the fore- 
sight to see what they would not have had the strength to 
resist. But Ambrose saw it, and turned the weakness of 
Imperial rule to the strengthening of that Church, in 
which all the hopes of the future should lie. Though he 
was forced by the emperor to be a bishop, he never became 
the tool of an emperor. But he rebuked royal vices at the 
very moment he was extorting royal concessions. He saw 
usurpers and murderers in the seat of power, and saw them 
share the fate of their victims. But he never would toler- 
ate usurpation and murder, though he did not disdain the 
moral influence which the humiliation of kings could give. 
We need not go over the dismal catalogue of political 
changes, nor rehearse the shifting: fortunes of the weak 
Valentinian, the amiable Gratian, the tyrannical Maximus — 
nor dwell upon the strange union of cruelty, dignity, and 
piety that were conspicuous in the life of the great Theo- 
dosius. Nor need we enumerate the long succession of 
salutary laws which the bishop of Milan procured from 
each of the short-lived reigns. Not the least timely of 
these was the law to prevent judicial assassination, by 
requiring that no condemned person should be executed in 
less than thirty days after his sentence. This put a stop 
at once to those wholesale murders under the forms of law, 
by which enraged governors sought to satisfy their sudden 
vengeance. It was a statute which the wisdom of all en- 
lightened nations will keep forever. 

But Ambrose did not hesitate to come into collision with 
the emperor or any other dignitary when the purity of 
Church doctrines was in question. He had no more 
respect for Arianism on the throne than in the street. 
Loyalty with him always yielded to zeal for the faith. The 
Emperor Valentinian I., who died the year after he was 
made bishop, left a most uncomfortable widow, whose 
heresy and ambition were alike inveterate, and who added 
all the arts of a hypocrite to all the obstinacy of a fanatic. 
If she seemed to submit, it was because she was deter- 
mined to conquer. If she labored like a mother for her 
weak-minded son, it was to keep a mother's rule over him 
when in power. In accepting the assistance of the bishop 



6 4 AMBROSE. 



in her day of trouble, she seemed to herself to be gaining 
a right to command him in her day of triumph. Ambrose 
supported the pretensions of the son because he believed 
him to be the proper heir to the throne, but he had no idea 
of yielding to the arrogance or to the heresy of the mother. 
During the life of her husband and her step-son, his first 
successor, who were sound Catholics, the empress did not 
venture to declare her religious views. But her first use of 
her son's absolute power, was coolly to demand for the use 
of the Arians, and the Court, the ancient Cathedral, which 
stood outside of the walls, and afterwards the new cathe- 
dral in the very heart of the city ; and with considerable 
shrewdness, she accompanied the demand with men to 
take possession. But the messengers found the bishop at 
the altar, ministering the high Easter service. He was 
summoned, in the name of the emperor, to give up the 
church. The messenger received this v noble answer: 
" Should the emperor require what is mine, my land or my 
money, I shall not refuse him, though all I possess belongs 
to the poor. If you require my estate, take it, — if my 
body, here it is, — load me with chains, kill me if you 
will, — I am content. I shall not fly to the protection of 
the people, nor cling to the altars : I choose rather to be 
sacrificed for the sake of the altars." The next morning 
the church was surrounded with soldiers after the bishop 
had entered, and for a day. and a night he was a close pris- 
oner. But the sermon that he preached so softened the 
hearts of the soldiers, and the prayers which he offered 
so cheered the spirits of the disciples, that when the order 
at last came for his release, it was received with a univer- 
sal shout of joy. The bishop had conquered without 
rebellion, and had made the occasion of tyranny an occa- 
sion of conversion. In the following year, the same 
experiment was tried again with no better success. An 
Arian bishop was consecrated at Court, and enjoyed in the 
royal favor the show of episcopal power. But in spite of 
all the edicts and fulminations of the Court, Ambrose took 
no notice of the foolish farce. He was imprisoned during 
worship in the church again. But he improved the occa- 
sion by a discourse that has come down to us, to discuss 
the true connection between Church and State. This dis- 



AMBROSE. 65 



course contains many views that savor strongly of our 
American Congregationalism, and does not sound very 
much like a flattery of power. It is an expansion of the 
Scripture precept, " Render unto Caesar the things which 
are Caesar's, but unto God the things which are God's." 
The imprisonment lasted several days, and the chroni- 
cles concerning it have embellished it with a few miracles, 
which add nothing to its moral effect. The statement, 
shortly after, of the man who came to murder him by 
order of the empress, and found his arm paralysed when 
he lifted the sword to strike, and was restored only when 
he confessed his guilty intention and declared his peni- 
tence, needs no supernatural intervention to explain it. 

One of the most extraordinary triumphs of spiritual over 
the civil power on record, is the humiliation of the great 
Theodosius before Ambrose. It is paralleled only by 
the penance of Henry II. before the tomb of Thomas a 
Becket. Theodosius was a man of singular gifts, both of 
mind and heart, who had attained by merit alone, without 
the privilege of birth, to the lofty station of Emperor in 
the East, and finally of Emperor in the whole Roman 
dominion. Though he was a devoted Christian, and rever- 
enced the altars of God, he wished to be severely just ; and 
sometimes his duties as sovereign seemed to conflict with 
his duties as a prince of the Church. In a small town in 
his dominion, the Christians, in revenge for the insult of 
some Jews upon them on a feast-day, had pulled down 
the Jewish synagogue. Theodosius ordered the Christians 
to build it up again, and those who had pulled it down to 
be severely punished. But he found here a stern opposer 
in Ambrose, who contended that Justice could not require 
an act of impiety, and that if it were a crime for angry 
men to destroy their neighbors' property, it were a worse 
crime for a Christian to build a house of worship for the 
Jew believer. This firmness overcame the monarch's 
sense of justice. The synagogue never rose from its ruins, 
and the hope of the Jews became vain. 

But this and other trifling triumphs over the emperor 

were only the prelude to his greater and more public 

humiliation. An outbreak had taken place at Thessalon- 

ica, at the time of the chariot races, in which several 

5 



(>6 AMBROSE. 



officers of rank were stoned to death, and their bodies 
dragged through the streets. Guided by his own wrath, 
and by the pernicious counsels of his favorite secretary, 
Theodosius determined at once to take exemplary ven- 
geance, and administer a terrible rebuke. A whole army 
was let loose upon the devoted city, neither age nor 
sex were spared, and at the end of three hours seven 
thousand slain were counted in promiscuous massacre. 
When next the emperor presented himself at the door of 
the church, he was met by the bishop there, who forbade 
him to cross the threshold, and commanded him to disci- 
pline his polluted soul in the severest penance before he 
ventured again to enter the Courts of a holy God. # Eight 
months long in his chamber this penance endured. And 
then, when the emperor came again, he found that the 
severe priest was not satisfied with a private, but a public 
exhibition of penitence. He was compelled by fear, and 
a guilty conscience, to submit. And for many hours, the 
people of Milan, as they passed the great cathedral, could 
behold the sovereign of the world prostrate upon the 
pavement of the porch, with tears running down his cheeks, 
beating his breast, and tearing his hair, and uttering mourn- 
ful cries, — like the vilest sinner. It was a splendid 
exhibition of the triumph of religion over power. And it 
is said of the emperor that no day of his after life did he 
fail to bewail the violation of God's laws, into which pas- 
sion had led him, or to thank the bishop as his spiritual 
Saviour. 

Another story is told of the influence of Ambrose upon 
Theodosius, which is worth repeating. On a great festival 
day, when Theodosius brought his offering to the altar, and 
remained standing within the rails of the chancel, Ambrose 
asked him if he wanted anything there. He answered 
that he wished to assist in administering the holy com- 
munion. The bishop then sent his archdeacon to him 
with this message : " Sir, it is lawful for none but anointed 

* In the Belvidere gallery of Vienna is a great picture by Rubens, 
representing this scene. The emperor stands on the left, on the steps 
of the church, surrounded by his guards, in the attitude of supplica- 
tion. On the right, and above, is Ambrose, attended by his minister- 
ing priests, stretching out his hand to repel the intruder. 



AMBROSE. 67 



ministers to remain here. Go out, and stand with other 
worshippers. The purple robe makes princes, but not 
priests." Excusing himself for the fault, and thanking 
the archbishop for his plainness of speech, he went out 
and stood with the rest. When he returned to Constan- 
tinople, instead of going within the rails, as before, he 
remained outside, upon which the bishop of that city- 
summoned him to take his former place. But the humbled 
emperor answered with a sigh : " Alas ! how hard it is for 
me to learn the difference between the priesthood and the 
empire. I am surrounded with flatterers, and have found 
only one man who has set me right, and has told me the 
truth. I know but one true bishop in the world, and that 
is Ambrose." 

While in the connection of Ambrose and Theodosius 
there is much to remind us of Nathan and David, in the 
intercourse of Ambrose and young Valentinian there is a 
striking resemblance to that of Samuel and Saul. The 
intrigues of his mother did not prevent the son from being 
a most docile pupil : and while in his Catholic zeal the 
bishop did everything to save the soul of the young prince 
from perdition, by his moral counsels, he was as faithful to 
save his life from corruptions. Happy were it if pious men, 
the guardians of religion, were always as careful to keep 
the characters of their disciples spotless, as they are to 
keep their opinions sound. 

In the year a. d. 384, Paganism received its death-blow 
in the great controversy of Symmachus with Ambrose, 
about the setting up again of the Altar of Victory in the 
Senate house, and the salaries restored to the order of 
Vestal Virgins. The controversy involved the great ques- 
tion of the right of a Christian State to protect or encour- 
age heathenism. The tottering fabric of the old mythology 
found a noble supporter in Symmachus. In him seemed 
to be restored the masculine energy, vigor, and eloquence 
of the days of the Republic. His splendid paragraphs 
were the echoes of voices from the past. His appeals 
brought back to patriotism, the dignity, the splendor, the 
trophies of the former time, when the Roman eagles and 
the Roman gods together led armies on to victory. In 
sorrowful numbers he sang a lament over the fallen 



68 AMBROSE. 



temples, — the bioken columns, the neglected altars, and 
sought, through pity for the low estate, to awaken sympathy 
for the fortunes of the old religion. Then he appealed 
with eloquent earnestness to the emperor's sense of right : 
" Shall not the conscience of men be respected ? Shall 
not the right of the citizen to his own worship be kept 
sacred ? Shall the State persecute those whose reverence 
will not allow them to forsake the gods of their fathers, 
who have given so many blessings to Arts and to Arms ? " 
And then, in ingenious sorrow, he recounts the calamities 
which had befallen them for their apostasy, and their for- 
getfulness of sacred things. The Genius of old Rome 
spoke through him. And the shades of heroes, of orators, 
of philosophers, of poets, seemed to gather around him 
as he spoke. But they were only shades, raised by the 
magic of his potent charm, and fell away again when 
the words of Ambrose dissolved the charm. 

The answers of Ambrose to the appeals of Symmachus 
have come down to us. If they lack the classic finish, the 
rhetorical fullness, the varying play of emotion in the 
appeals of the accomplished Pagan, they have all the 
force and earnestness of a confidence in the right of his 
cause. There is less pathos about them, but there is more 
power. The reference is not to the former glories, but to 
future judgments. The emperor is made to see not the 
triumphs of Scipio and Caesar, but of the Tribunal of God. 
" Give to the merit of renowned men," says he, " all that 
is due, but where God is in question, think upon God. 
No one can be treated unjustly, when God is preferred. 
Nothing can be higher than religion, than faith. The 
emperor is the most exalted of men. But as all serve him, 
so should he serve his God and the true faith. Can he 
who builds the temples for idols be received again into the 
Church of Christ. How cans't thou answer the priest of 
God when he says to thee, ' the Church wishes not thy 
gifts, since thou hast profaned them to the service of the 
heathen ? ' Christ disdains the obedience of one who 
follows after idols. It is thy soul that thou losest in seek- 
ing to bring falsehood back." And then, with clear 
analysis, he opens the folly of referring the ancient glory 
of the people to its gods instead of its men, — and humor- 



AMBROSE. 69 



ously asks if Jupiter were in the goose whose hissing 
saved Rome from the Gauls. He puts aside the specious 
plea that there are many ways of serving and acknowledg- 
ing God, by asking if the revealed word of God has 
declared it so. " Has it not said that Christ is the only 
name by which men can be saved ? And when," he indig- 
nantly asks, " was it ever known that a heathen emperor 
listened to this plea and built an altar to Christ.''* 

Symmachus had demanded, not as a matter of right 
alone, but as a bounty, that provision for the priests, and 
vestals which could support them in becoming state. This 
gives occasion to Ambrose to contrast the heathen priests 
and virgins with those of a Christian profession. He 
shows the latter poor in goods, but rich in grace, — seek- 
ing rather to deny than indulge themselves, — using their 
own property for the aid of others, not coveting the goods 
of others for their own advantage, — -adorning their charity 
with humility, instead of splendor, — asking no aid from 
the ruling powers, but ready to give these the blessing of 
their prayers. He points to that virginity which seeks not 
to display, but to hide itself, not to ride in a chariot, but 
to kneel in a cloister, — not to go clothed in a harlot's colors 
of gold and purple, but in the white of purity and the 
black of penitence. Have the chaste matrons, who vow 
themselves to pious seclusion, asked for a stipend to nour- 
ish their idleness? Have they not rather filled their 
seclusion with busy industry for the welfare of the poor 
and the suffering? Do they ask a bounty on their 
prayers? And why should the priests and virgins of a 
dead religion, that even the barbarians have spurned, 
which can show only a few mouldering trophies, but no 
present good, and no future hope, receive more than do 
the priests and virgins of a religion which asks nothing of 
the world but to believe and to obey, — which is bringing 
the heathen into a common fold, and making the utter- 
most parts of the earth joyful together? Woe to the 
empire when active virtue receives no gift, while lazy 
worthlessness is rewarded with vestments and gold, when 
the living man is left to starve, while the corpse is em- 
balmed and covered with flowers." 

In such wise did the Christian bishop argue against the 



70 AMBROSE. 



heathen orator. And his appeal proved the mightier. No 
concessions were made. The controversy seems insignifi- 
cant to us now, — and hardly can we rise to its historical 
grandeur. But it was the most significant fact of the 
time. The combatants were the noblest and most emi- 
nent representatives of heathenism and the Christianity of 
the age. The cause of each religion seems pleading in 
their words. Symmachus, the senator, full of the tradi- 
tions of ancient Rome, speaks in a poetic and elevated 
tone; he touches everything, he urges every plea, — the 
right of history, of custom, of tradition, of charity, of the 
interest of the State, the king, of religion itself. Where 
one will not do, he presses the other. If faith in the gods 
will not prevail, let State policy be considered. In his 
words there is a certain undeniable sense of right. They 
are the last sorrowful elegy on the falling altars of ancient 
Rome, and they extort our compassion as we follow them. 
But. they lack the vital truth. They are an ingenious show 
of justice. We first come to the heart of the matter when 
we read the clear, logical, strong, living answer of Am- 
brose. Here is the consciousness of eternal truth ; there 
only the defence of tottering error. The one is the artist 
who would twine the wild vines beautifully round the 
broken columns, and deceive men into worship there, — 
the other the architect, who would build on the ruins a 
temple meet for future worship. But we turn from these 
details of controversy, which, perhaps, have had for you 
but little interest, to behold Ambrose in a different sphere 
of labor, in his literary and religious activity. 

He was the first poet of the Western Church, as well as 
its greatest bishop. The Latin hymns of Ambrose, unlike 
the Greek hymns of Synesius, are not so much theological 
as practical, and were intended from the beginning for use 
in the churches. In a visit to Greece, the bishop had seen 
the splendid effect that answering choirs of voices pro- 
duced in sacred worship, and on his return he introduced 
it into his own. He was willing to be taught by adversa- 
ries, and the policy of the Arians had proved that the 
songs of the Sanctuary did more than its creeds for the 
conversion of souls. Twelve hymns now remain to us of 
the composition of Ambrose, though it is probable he wrote 



AMBROSE. 7 1 



many more. They are used still in the Roman Catholic 
service, and you will find them in the missal of that 
Church. But their sweet ministry went farther than the 
public service. They cheered the anchorite in his cell, and 
comforted the prisoner in his living tomb. The martyr 
gained courage as he lifted their lines, and forgot the 
devouring flames around him. They gave an inspiration 
to hours of misery, and brought heaven into the soul that 
was worn by the weariness of earth. It is impossible in 
any version, more especially a literal version, to give an 
idea of the tire, the earnestness, the flowing movement of 
these old Latin hymns, — lacking altogether classic finish 
and beauty, — but full of living and longing faith, — what 
the Germans call the "swing" of devotion. They bear 
the same relation to classic verses that the Psalmody of 
the Methodists does to the polished stanzas of the pro- 
fessed poets. You may see this illustrated by comparing 
the hymn of Charles Wesley, "A charge to keep I have," 
with the hymn of Bishop Heber (the 814th of our collec- 
tion), " The God of glory walks his round," on the same 
subject. The latter is a stream of pure poetry and exqui- 
site beauty. But the former has the true glow of inspira- 
tion about it, and will send the blood tingling through the 
veins when it is sung. 

The most famous hymns of Ambrose are his songs for 
morning and evening. The contrasts between these are 
beautifully preserved, yet the same faith is found in both. 
The morning-song is written to be sung at cock-crow. 

1. — The sullen darkness breaks away, 

See in the East the crimson day ! 

We own, gi-eat God, thy wondrous love, 

O let it lift our souls above. 

2. — Day's herald stirs our hearts to joy, 

Let joy in prayer the hour employ, 
The wayward dream is lost in light, 
Let wandering faith now rise to sight. 

3. — Far on the heaven the star of dawn 

Gleams on the forehead of the morn. 

A sacred emblem let it be, 

Of Faith and Truth and Purity. 

4. — The sailor on the billowy tide 

Bids now his bark more boldlv ride, 



72 AMBROSE. 



And the penitent on bended knee 

In the dim church-light his Christ doth see, 

5. — Hark ! The shrill cock cries, — let the sleeper awake, 

Let his leaden slumbers their silence break, 
Let him hear the sound which calls him away 
From the waste of sleep to the work of the day. 

6. — With the new cock-crow the weary find hope, 

New faith in the sufferer's heart springs up, 

The sick man draws a fresher breath, 

And the sword of the robber hides in its sheath. 

7. — Look down, O Lord, from thy glory on high, 

Lend us the light of thy loving eye, 
Strengthen us now with thy heavenly might, 
Save us from guilt ; keep our souls right. 

8. — A worthy song to thee we would raise, 

Open our lips to sing thy praise, 
Drive far away the dreams of the night, 
Illumine our hearts, Celestial Light. 

The imperfection of this translation can give you only 
the swinging measure, and the fervent spirit of the original, 
but nothing of its genuine force. The evening song is its 
counterpart. And in all the songs the beauties of Nature 
are made suggestive of spiritual thought and practical 
duty. They are all adapted, too, to some particular time 
of worship. The famous song to the Trinity, which 
Luther loved so much that he translated it for the Re- 
formed Church, was written for the close of vespers. 
There is no one of our common doxologies that will com- 
pare with it in quiet energy. It is a thing which sacred 
poets have not often been able to achieve, to apostrophize 
the Trinity, and yet retain the idea of filial reverence. 

1. — Thou, who art three in unity, 

The true God from eternity, 

The sun hath veiled his glorious face, 

Enfold us now in thy embrace. 

2. — We hail with praise the morning light, 

We kneel in prayer with the falling night, 
Thy name now bless, thy grace implore, 
Thee magnify for evermore. 

3. — Thee, Father of all, Eternal Lord, 

Thee, Saviour Son, the Incarnate Word, 
Thee, Comforter, Holy Spirit of love, 
Three on earth, one God above. 



AMBROSE. 73 



Ambrose has been styled, in regard to his hymns, the 
Luther of the Latin Church. He did for the music of this, 
indeed, what Luther did for the music of the German. 
And to this day several of his ancient songs are sung in 
the Lutheran chapels from the clear, sonorous version of 
the great Reformer. The characteristics of Ambrose as a 
poet are the same as those of Luther. There is the same 
outwardness, the same earnestness of faith, the same 
practical character. And we cannot wonder that these 
hymns have kept their place for so many centuries, while 
the more finished Christian poetry has so much of it 
passed into oblivion. For it is not polished verse that 
binds itself to the heart of the world, but rather those 
simple strains which exhort to duty while they cling to 
faith. 

Ambrose, as a poet, has had much more influence upon 
the Church, than as a general writer. His works are valu- 
able rather as curiosities of literature than for their intrin- 
sic merit. His critical writings upon the various books of 
the Old and New Testaments, are mere specimens of alle- 
gorizing, without the genius for that kind of interpretation. 
He wrote a good many doctrinal books, but these were 
more successful in putting the Arians down than in build- 
ing up any substantial system. His general views were 
more Orthodox than those of the men of his time. He 
was distinct upon the Trinity, and his views about deprav- 
ity leaned to that positive imputation of Adam's sin, 
which afterwards became part of the Catholic creed. At 
the same time he taught that a man would be punished 
only for his own actual sins, and not for those of his 
father. He anticipates Luther in the doctrine of free 
grace and election, and hints, not obscurely, at the eternal 
misery of the wicked. To him belongs the honor, too, if 
it be an honor, of first broadly asserting the real presence 
of Christ in the Sacrament, that the bread and wine were 
changed into the body and blood of the Saviour. But all 
these doctrines lie so loosely in his writings, that they 
teach no definite scheme, and seem of little worth. The 
ascetic writings of Ambrose are written with more spirit, 
and suit more his temper and taste. He loved to think 
and talk about virginity, and fasts ; about the duty of 



74 AMBROSE. 



saints, and the need of sacrifices. He wrote with a real 
relish the biographies of various Scriptural characters — 
such as Abraham and Joseph, Cain and Abel ; and his 
remarks upon Noah's Ark are as quaint and original as 
the description of its length by one of my venerable pre- 
decessors. 

Upon Christian ethics, Ambrose wrote a more ambitious 
work. Taking the Pagan Cicero for his guide, he laid down 
a catalogue of virtues more in harmony with the philoso- 
phy of the Stoics, than the piety of the Gospel. There is 
no need here of going into any criticism of that system, 
for it has long ago been superseded, and never became the 
moral code of the Catholic Church. Its ground principle 
is that the flesh and the spirit are essentially opposed, and 
that the element of all virtue is in exalting the latter and 
depressing the former. He enumerates four cardinal vir- 
tues : " Wisdom, Justice, Firmness, and Moderation." A 
strange classification, is it not, for a Christian, — to leave 
out every one of the beatitudes? It is Cicero restored 
again. But Ambrose gives a Christian interpretation to 
these. Wisdo?n, he calls the true relation of man to God ; 
Justice, of man to Man; Firmness, of man to outward 
events ; Moderation, of man to himself. In Christian 
speech, these four virtues would be called piety, love, con- 
tentment, and self-denial. And the account that he gives 
of them is of this kind. Under each of these virtues he 
brings up some practical illustration from sacred history, 
generally from the Old Testament. It is, to say the least, 
a strange fancy which instances the Virgin Mary as an 
example of moderation. The Scriptures attribute to the 
Virgin many excellent feminine graces, but say nothing 
about her self-denial, or her conflicts with the flesh. 

Ambrose divides duties into two classes, perfect, and 
partial. Imperfect duties are those which are common to 
every body, and which all may easily fulfill — such as 
duties to parents, to teachers, to society, and the State. 
Perfect duties are duties which only comparatively few 
can perform — duties to the church, such as celibacy, 
fasting, prayer, almsgiving. In other words, imperfect 
duties are those by which a man does all that is necessary 
to get along comfortably ; perfect, those that are super- 



AMBROSE. 75 



fluous and voluntary, are purely for the good of man and 
the glory of God. There were two ethical controversies 
into which Ambrose flung himself heart and soul, — con- 
troversies which have never ceased, and perhaps never 
will. One is between the "Right" and the "Expedient," 
and here by a variety of ingenious arguments he at- 
tempted to show that expediency is never the test of right, 
but that what the Church declares to be right is always 
expedient. A principle, you perceive, which worked its 
result afterwards in the horrors of the Inquisition, and the 
burning of heretics.* The other was whether the denial 
or the use of the natural appetites were better. Here 
Ambrose was of the class who would frown down all 
amusements, would make soberness the type of piety, 
and make perfect holiness to consist in voluntary suffer- 
ing. He would have started with horror in hearing one 
say that the hands and feet as well as the heart and soul 
were meant for the pleasure of men. And he became a 
remorseless persecutor of those who plead for a natural 
and genial life. The satirical pen of Jerome was aided 
by the Episcopal will of Ambrose in crushing the bold 
Jovinian, whose only crime was in holding that every 
creature of God was good, that the world was made to 
rejoice, and not to weep in, and that happiness was better 
than living martyrdom. 

But though Ambrose was not adverse to controversy, and 
was ready to fight in defense of the truth he loved best, 
the sacred privileges of his Episcopal duty, and the sacred 
rights of God's altar, the Saint most appeared when he 
led the devotions on the holy day of the kneeling throng, 
when he spoke to them of the great sacrifice, and asked 
for them saving mercy. To him the Church was truly the 
gate of heaven. He felt the joy as well as the profit of 
worship. The service of prayer never became to him com- 
mon because familiar. He cared for the decencies of 
God's house, because he felt God's presence there. And 

* While Ambrose thus by his theory prepared the way for religious 
persecution it should be mentioned in his honor, that he protested 
against the execution of Priscillian for heresy, and refused to hold 
communion with the bishops who sanctioned this. Priscillian was 
the first whom Christians put to death for conscience sake. 



76 AMBROSE. 



he is usually painted in his Episcopal chair, with simple 
dignity dispensing a benediction to the humble Chris- 
tians too happy in feeling his hand upon their heads. He 
loved, too, the various duties of a bishop's life, — to com- 
pose the strifes of foes, to judge in doubtful causes, to 
give faith to a doubting soul, — to give hope to a breaking 
heart. He loved to send help to the needy ; he loved to 
speak peace to the sufferer. Often his presence by night 
in the poor man's cottage seemed sent from God, often his 
fervent prayer made the death-bed happy. He who could 
humble an Emperor, loved better to comfort the mourner, 
and save the sinner. His visit purified the heart of vice, 
his voice was music in the home of sorrow. From rebuke 
to compassion, from instruction to mercy, from judgment 
to pardon, his life continually passed. In the morning he 
spoke to the crowd in the great Cathedral, that now is the 
accepted time, now is the day of salvation. At noon, 
when they crowded his palace with their gifts for judg- 
ment, his word to each was, " Go thy way, be reconciled to 
thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." At night 
he cheered the lonely one in her humble home with the 
Saviour's call, " Come unto me all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden and I will give you rest." . He was a true 
bishop, fearing never the frown of man, but caring always 
for every child of God. His heart was an asylum for the 
fears and the sorrows of his flock, as he would have the 
Church an asylum for the persecuted. He was a true 
bishop in discretion. His firmness never became ob- 
stinate, his zeal never became reckless, his dogmatism 
never became arrogant. He denounced the errors, but 
did n'ot asperse the fame, of heretics. He rebuked the 
sins, but did not insult the dignity of monarchs. He re- 
lieved the wants without despising the state of the poor. 
He was patient in hearing, calm in deciding, prompt in 
acting. His ambition was not to be served, but to serve. 
He counted no day lost that was spent in making others 
happy, peaceful, or faithful. He carried in one hand the 
blessing of an earthly life, in the other the key of a 
heavenly kingdom. At the altar he stood to interpret 
mysteries, in the house, to minister mercies, and it is hard 
to tell in which his work was holiest. He had all the con- 



AMBROSE. 77 



sciousness, with none of the pride, of influence. He was 
grateful for his office without being vain of it, and he 
strove to magnify it not by many pretensions, but by alms, 
and prayers, and the salvation of souls. He defended 
the monastic theory, but he did not use the monastic prac- 
tice. He exercised the piety which the hermit spent in 
seclusion, in bringing men to God. And in an age when 
men thought that their truest duty was to remove from 
duty, his example proved that an active love is better than 
a contemplative virtue. With the other great men who 
make up with him the four great Doctors of the Western 
Church he will not compare in learning, genius, or strength 
of soul. But he is the greatest Saint among them, and 
did more good in his day and generation than they all. 

The Easter of the year 397, was a sad and solemn festi- 
val for the Church at Milan. For the manly form and 
countenance that had so often bent down there before the 
silent throng in fervent entreaty and sweet benediction, 
now lay in the sleep of death before the altar. It was a 
touching story that they told of his dying, how the em- 
peror, afraid for his whole dominion if this good man died, 
called his nobility and magistrates together and persuaded 
them to go to Ambrose and ask him to beg of God a 
longer life, — how he refused to ask God to change his 
plans — or to delay the hour of his release, — what won- 
derful signs prophesied his near spiritual glory, a flame in 
the form of a shield creeping over his face, his body lying 
with the hands extended in the form of the cross, his 
sight of Jesus coming smiling towards him. They told of 
his last words, and his last look, and of the peaceful sink- 
ing of his breath away. And then he seemed to be 
bending again above the weeping crowd, and a voice to 
be heard, " Weep, friends, no longer ; Him whom ye loved 
is not here. He is risen." 

St. Ambrose has enjoyed the rare honor of a place on 
the calendar of the Greek as well as the Latin Church. 
His name stands beside that of Chrysostom and Basil 
there, and so wherever the memory of the Fathers is kept 
sacred, his hath its appropriate season. There are many 
who claim to possess portions of his holy relics, and it is 
probable that not many of the bones are left where they 



7 8 AMBROSE. 



were laid at first. The city in which he labored and died 
has long since been troubled about other things than the 
preservation of relics. But his bones are not needed 
to keep him in mind there. So long as the great cathedral, 
the miracle of art, stands proudly there in the public 
square, so long as white-robed priests celebrate the service 
at its altar, so long as the immortal ministry of the later 
saint, the good Borromeo, is fresh in the affection of the 
people, will the thought of this great spiritual father stay 
there. Rome may lose from his holy seat her Pope, the 
memory of her orators and patriarchs may pass away, — 
but the name of Ambrose will linger in Milan, deserted 
though it should be, as a holier name still lingers in and 
sanctifies the desolate walls of Jerusalem. 



AUGUSTINE. 79 



II. 

ST. AUGUSTINE AND HIS INFLUENCE. 

How patient and powerful is a mother's love ! Hopeful 
in every sorrow, bearing up against every disgrace and sin 
of him she loves, never desperate, never indifferent. How 
many of the world's greatest benefactors have been made 
so by a mother's enduring affection ! To this sentiment 
the Christian Church owes its brightest names ; and to 
none is its debt of gratitude more due than to Monica, the 
mother of St. Augustine. Her untiring love and prayers 
kept the youth from realizing in manhood his youthful ten- 
dencies, and saved to the ancient Church her greatest 
light • 

The scene of our sketches, thus far, has been laid in the 
East and in the North ; in Bethlehem of Judea ; in Milan, 
the frontier city ; and in Rome, the ancient capital of the 
world. We shall turn now to the land of a Southern 
clime, where the associations, both historical and religious, 
if less numerous and splendid, are not less striking than 
in the East and the North. We have spoken of the 
great men who, in Asia and in Europe, represented the 
speech and the spirit of the Catholic Church. We turn 
now to Africa, to find its greatest thinker. The scholar 
and the bishop need their complement in the theologian. 
The biblical labors of the one, the pastoral purity of the 
other, may be viewed now as harmonizing into a life of 
rare powers and combinations. 

He whom we shall speak of in this lecture, was the con- 
vert of Ambrose, and the correspondent of Jerome; 
receiving from the one, piety of heart; receiving from the 
other, accuracy of knowledge, and uniting the excellence 
of both to original qualities possessed by neither. 

Rarely have the lives of the saints furnished us with 
such rich material as the memorials of Augustine, which 



8o AUGUSTINE. 



are left behind. Besides that most voluminous correspon- 
dence on every variety of subject, besides those multifarious 
treatises which give us every shade of the author's 
thought, we have from his own pen a book of Confessions, 
which trace his spiritual history with a minuteness as 
admirable as the candor with which they expose his frail- 
ties. More than these, he had his Boswell in an admiring 
deacon, Possidius by name, whose panegyric upon Augus- 
tine gives us a higher opinion of its subject than of its 
author. And if all else were lost about him, the multitude 
of allusions from contemporary writers, would give us a 
quite complete biography. The controversy that Jerome 
carried on with him exhibits the mildness and ability of 
one foe, while it shows the conceit and scholarship of the 
other. 

In the year 354, on the 13th of November, at the little 
town of Thagaste, not far from Carthage, in Africa, was 
born a child, who received from his parents the name of 
Aurelius Augustine. The father, a nobleman of that 
region, arbitrary in his temper, a worldly believer in the 
Pagan gods, and a strong adherent to Imperial rule, might 
rejoice most in the surname which called back the greatest 
and most arbitrary of Roman monarchs, and the palmy 
days of Pagan rule. But the mother might have a prophe- 
tic Christian hope in giving us a Christian name, Aurelius, 
(signifying a sun of gold), for she was a devoted Christian, 
and trusted yet to convert her husband to the faith of 
Jesus. To both was the child a child of promise : to the 
father, as one who should establish the fame of the states- 
man and the philosopher ; to the mother, as one who should 
become a good steward of the grace of God. The differ- 
ing tastes of the parents, though perhaps not favorable to 
their domestic happiness, were of advantage in making 
the son complete in his education. The classical and 
rhetorical teachings of Patricius were tempered and sancti- 
tified by the prayers of Monica. 

There is nothing in the infancy and childhood of Augus- 
tine that is especially remarkable. Rather less than the 
usual quantity of miracles seemed to mark him above his 
fellows. He seems to have been pretty much like other 
boys of a sanguine temperament, — rather fond of having 



AUGUSTINE. Si 



his own way, and ready for fun of any kind, — especially 
if it involved the element of roguery. He tells us in his 
Confessions, with great minuteness, his boyish foibles; and 
we recognize in his account of robbing his neighbor's pear 
tree with other boys, just for sport, while he flung the fruit 
away as not fit to eat, a characteristic of boyhood almost 
everywhere. The tears and entreaties of his mother did 
not quite succeed in making him a good boy according to 
the received standards. He had no great taste for study, 
though he loved Latin, his own tongue, and especially the 
poetry in it. But Greek took too much labor, and mathe- 
mathics were his special aversion. The difficulties of a 
modern school-boy in learning the multiplication table could 
not be more severe than those of this eminent saint. And 
yet the boy was very bright, and though he would not study 
hard, and loved to hunt and catch birds, and loiter about 
more than he loved his books, he was somehow or other 
always ready, and was the first among his equals. His 
father was very proud of him and sent him away to school, 
first to Madaura, where he learned grammar and rhetoric, 
and afterwards to Carthage, which was the Collegiate City 
of Africa, — what Rome was to Italy and Alliens to 
Greece. In these places his progress in knowledge and 
dissipation was alike conspicuous. He became eminent as 
a fast man, as well as a strong man, familiarized himself 
with all kinds of vice, and gained a knowledge of the 
world in her sins, as well as of wisdom in her treasures. 
His mother's remonstrances he despised, — thinking them 
to be mere womanly weakness. He had a great respect 
for Christianity, but no faith or interest in it. Even his 
father's death did not turn him from his course. If it led 
him to apply himself to study as a means of support for 
himself and those whom nature, and whom his own folly or 
vice had made dependent on him, it did not soften his 
heart or convert him to the Gospel. His head soon 
became turned by the various theories which he stumbled 
upon, but it was fortunate for him that, among the rest, 
he fell upon the Hortensius of Cicero, a philosophical 
work now lost, which kindled in him a great ardor for 
philosophy, and a great disgust for his irregular mode 
of life. He gave up his boon companions at once, and 
6 



82 AUGUSTINE. 



henceforward devoted himself, heart and soul, to the 
search after truth. His pursuit of this end only made 
him more eager as he failed to find truth in the works of 
heathen philosophers. He felt that there was something 
wanting in Aristotle and Cicero. They gave him specula- 
tion, where he craved assurance. And his early Christian 
associations still lingered by him. He remembered the 
name of Jesus, so often mentioned in his mother's prayers ; 
and he could not get over the feeling that the name of 
Christ ought to be found in every religious treatise. His 
dissatisfaction became such that he finally determined to 
read the Bible, a book of which he had heard a good deal 
from his mother, but which his father did not think 
much of. It disappointed him very much. Its style seemed 
tame compared with the flowing and stately rhetoric of the 
heathen orators, and the ideas in it too simple and practi- 
cal to suit his notion of the dignity of religious truths. He 
gave up the Bible accordingly very soon, and went back to 
philosophical speculations to find a faith. It is not un- 
common for young men of twenty or thereabouts to see in 
philosophy an answer to the questions about life and death 
and God, which perplexed them. The most tempting 
solution which St. Augustine seemed to find was in the 
sect of the Manicheans. 

This Manichean sect had a mixed origin from the 
mythology of Persia and the mysticism of the Gnostics, 
drawing from the first its doctrine of sin, and the second 
its doctrine of emanations from God. Manes, its 
founder, was a Chaldean by birth, and flourished during 
the latter half of the third century. He incorporated 
into his system the leading features of the Persian dual- 
ism, — of two eternal antagonist principles, of good and 
evil, which he gave names to and ranked as equal gods. 
He took the spiritual system of Plato, and taught that 
everything in nature has a soul. In every man he thought 
that there were two souls, — an angel and a demon, — the 
angel -soul, created there by the good God; and the 
demon-soul, created there by the bad God. Throughout 
his system there was the strangest mixture of spirituality 
and absurdity, of vagaries and of Christian precepts, — of 
high and of weak morality. He spoiled his denial of the 



AUGUSTINE. 83 



resurrection of the flesh, — which was a sensible advance 
upon the common faith, — by affirming the transmigration 
of souls, which was a return to the old Pythagorean fancy. 
The morality which he taught was in some respects very 
high and pure, in others, very puerile. It carried the princi- 
ple of temperance so far as to refuse the wine of the Lord's 
Supper, and would not pluck an edible root or fruit for fear 
of injuring the soul which dwelt within it. It was a strange 
mixture of hardness of heart and sensitiveness of fancy. 
It cared for the souls of men, yet neglected their wants. 
But its very peculiarities caused the system of Manes to 
spread, and at the time of Augustine it was a popular and 
powerful philosophical sect. The young rhetorician was 
captivated by its specious pretensions. It flattered his 
spiritual pride in pretending to initiate him into spiritual 
secrets. And it gave a mystical answer to those doubts 
about God and the origin of evil, which he found so per- 
plexing. He gave himself to the sect, and was nine years 
a warm adherent. But the ignorance and pretensions of 
a certain eminent Dr. Faustus opened his eyes, and he was 
then amazed that he had remained in the absurdities and 
darkness of Manicheism so long. 

During most of this period, from the age of nineteen to 
twenty-eight, he was a teacher of rhetoric, first at his 
native town, Thagaste, and then at Carthage. The tears 
and prayers of his mother, for his recovery from corrup- 
tion of life and his impious faith, were incessant. And 
when she was ready to despair, prodigies were ministered 
to keep up her faith. Finding that her own manifestations 
of abhorrence had very little effect, — for she showed this 
by refusing to sit or eat with him, — she tried to get the 
Bishop of Thagaste to persuade him into the truth. But 
this prelate was sagacious enough to evade such an honor- 
able, but arduous, task, and excused himself by saying 
that Augustine was so intoxicated by the novelty of his 
heresy, and so puffed up, that talking would be of no use ; 
for he had already puzzled sorely divers Catholics of more 
zeal than learning, who had attempted to argue the matter 
with him. When she still persisted in entreating him, he 
dismissed her with the comfortable prophecy, " Go your 
way, — God bless you, — it cannot be that a child of those 



84 AUGUST] NE. 



tears should perish." She had a very cheering dream, 
too, in which she saw a young man, who, when she had 
told him all her troubles, bid her keep a good heart, for 
her son should be where she was ; and then turning round 
she saw him on the same plank with herself. When thus 
her prayers were just ready to faint and expire, then sud- 
denly they revived again. 

The most serious impression made upon Augustine in 
this period, was from the death of an early and bosom 
friend, the companion of his studies, his follies, and his 
heresies. This young man, soon after he became a Chris- 
tian, died of a short sickness, and the ridicule of Augustine 
for his new-born piety was changed into anguish at his 
loss. He has left us a touching story of his grief, of 
the vacancy that came into his heart, and the darkness 
which came over his plans of life. He felt now the inade- 
quacy of his philosophy, but instead of seeking in the 
consoling faith of his mother for comfort, he plunged more 
into those pursuits of worldliness and ambition which 
could drown the memory of his loss. He became first in 
all the public disputations, renowned as an orator, adroit 
as a pleader, and entered more eagerly into theatrical 
pleasures and scientific studies, gradually growing more 
and more restless as he failed to find happiness in these. 

At the age of twenty-nine Augustine came to a turning- 
point in his life. He had become weary of his useless 
labors, sick of his round of follies, and skeptical in all 
matters of inquiry. He was solitary, tired and sad. 
Truth seemed no where to lie around him, the pursuits 
of the world to be vain, and no hope opened beyond them. 
There was darkness behind and darkness before him. 
And as he found his astrology worthless in really acquaint- 
ing him with the stars above, so he found his Manichean 
philosophy weak in interpreting the hidden laws of God 
and life. In the chaos of his thoughts one bright idea 
struck him. He would break away from his loose com- 
panions, and go to Rome, the great centre of power to the 
universe, of which from his childhood he had heard so 
many singular stories. He would try now his talents on a 
broader sphere, and show those proud patricians that as 
the arms of Hannibal conquered them once in their own 



AUGUSTINE. 85 



homes, so now the art of another African should captivate 
them there. He stole away therefore by night to escape 
the entreaties of his mother, whose first despair was 
lightened by hope, when she remembered that he was 
going to a Christian city. But his first impressions of 
Rome were saddened by a violent fever, which took him 
after his arrival, and kept him for a long time at the point 
of death. On his recovery he set himself to teaching 
rhetoric, and had what seemed distinguished success. 
Scholars flocked to his classes, the wits and orators 
courted his society, and the great Symmachus, who was 
then in the height of his power, became his friend. But 
Rome did not satisfy him more than Carthage. If the 
students were less profligate, they were more fickle ; if 
they were less fond of show, they were more mean. The 
Christianity of the city seemed to him a farce, and its 
daily life a comedy. In his own heart he felt that the 
tragedy was acting. And he was glad therefore when, on 
a summons from the emperor, he was sent by Symmachus 
to Milan, greater then in the reputation of its bishop than 
as the Imperial City. 

It was a great day for Augustine, when he first heard in 
the Milan cathedral a sermon from Ambrose. He had 
heard before from his Manichean teachers more brilliant 
oratory, but never had he heard such solid reasoning, such 
vastness of knowledge, such profoundness of thought, or 
such a spirit of sincere faith. It seemed to open to him 
another world. And though he went only to gratify his 
curiosity, yet the impression remained with him, that there 
was something good in a superstition which could make so 
great a man its servant. The impression was deepened 
by the subsequent close acquaintance which he formed 
with the great bishop. The dignified mildness, the calm 
wisdom, the insight into the spiritual meaning of those 
dark passages of Scripture, which had seemed nonsense to 
his Manichean view, and above all, the poetical sentiment 
of the mind and language, while they showed the superi- 
ority of the great Christian teacher to all other philoso- 
phers, commended also silently his doctrine to the heart of 
Augustine. Day by day he felt himself coming under the 
fascinations of that wonderful character and intellect. And 



86 AUGUSTINE. 



even while his reason was resisting, his heart was giving 
way. It was a delightful message that brought to his 
mother the news that Ambrose was the friend of her son, 
and it brought the mother to his side. It needed the 
prayers of a mother to confirm the work which had been 
begun in the soul of Augustine. 

But the process of Augustine's conversion was slow and 
gradual. His was not a mind to yield at once to the im- 
pression of the moment or to be carried away by novelty. 
He was a seeker after truth, and his tastes were scientific, 
rather than religious. During the two years that he 
remained at Milan, he examined and rejected many 
heathen views and gained what, after all, is the needful 
foundation for Christian faith, humility and self -dis- 
trust. At first, he read Plato and Plotinus with great 
delight. For they corrected his gross corporeal notions of 
the essence of God, and represented him as a purely 
spiritual being. But he did not find that Plato solved for 
him the problem of life, or made him wise in regard to 
the future. He turned then to Paul, and found great 
delight in his Epistles, so strikingly opposite in their reli- 
gious earnestness to anything that he had before read. 
They created in him the desire to become a Christian, 
which is the second step in the Christian life. But still 
the desire was a long time in passing into its fulfillment. 
He has given us in his Confessions a most affecting 
account of his strong inward conflicts, — how the earthly 
passions warred there with the spiritual desire, how the 
flesh strove with the spirit, with what reluctance his sinful 
heart yielded, little by little, its convulsive hold upon 
the world. And, perhaps, the worldly attraction would 
have proved stronger at last, but for the yielding of some 
weaker friends to the religious impulse. Augustine had 
not his mother only, but also a son by his side, — a child 
of early sin, but not the less dear to his heart for that. 
And when he saw this child giving his heart to God, — the 
sternness of the strong man was melted and broken. 

I cannot here go over the minute and striking account 
which Augustine gives of his own conversion, — those 
bitter regrets, those burning tears, that wrestling with the 
tempter, reminding us of St. Anthony in his night-visions ; 



AUGUSTINE, 87 



those conversations with his friend Alipius, as they walked 
in their garden, reminding us of Socrates in the groves of 
the Academy. One day they were visited here by Ponti- 
tianus, a simple menial in the emperor's household, but 
an eminent Christian, who related to them, in a sincere 
and unaffected way, the story of his own conversion, 
caused by reading the life of St. Anthony. No sooner 
had he gone than Augustine broke out in these words to 
his friend : "What are we doing, who thus suffer the un- 
learned to start up, and seize heaven by force, whilst we, 
with all our knowledge, remain cowardly and heartless, 
and wallow still in the mire ? What ! because they have 
outstripped us, and are gone before, are we ashamed to 
follow them ? Is it not more shameful not to follow 
them ? " He then rose, in a violent excitement, and paced 
through the garden like one beside himself. He seemed 
to see religion stretching out her arms to receive him, and 
offering him all chaste and holy delights. Yet all around 
him were a legion of demons, for these were the forms 
that his former pleasures took, and they shrieked and 
threatened if he should go with their enemy away. At 
last, in an agony of despair, he threw himself down under 
a fig-tree, and burst into a flood of tears. " How long," 
he cried. " How long, O Lord ? To-morrow ! To-mor- 
row ! Why does not this hour put an end to my trans- 
gression ? " As he cried thus, he heard the voice 
of a child in a neighboring house, singins; a song-, the 
refrain of which was, " Tolle, lege, — tolle, lege, take up 
and read." He was struck by the words, and not being 
able to recollect that he had ever heard them before in a 
child's song, it seemed to him a divine voice. He went 
back quickly to his friend, and took up the volume of St. 
Paul's Epistles, which he had left there, opened it, and read 
the following words, the first on which his eyes fell : " Let 
us walk honestly, as in the day, not in rioting and drunken- 
ness, — not in impurity and wantonness, — not in strife 
and envying; — but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
make no provision for the flesh with its lusts." It was 
enough, he read no farther, but calmly handed the book to 
his friend, marking the place. Alipius read it, and finding 
that the next words were, " Him that is weak in the faith 



AUGUSTINE. 



receive," — -applied them to himself, and joined his friend 
in his sudden purpose to adopt a Christian life of self- 
denial. Augustine thus breaks out into rapturous joy at 
the thought of his conversion. " O, how sweet did it 
become to lose the sweets of my former follies ! What I 
had been so much afraid to lose, I now cast from me with 
joy ; for thou has expelled them for me, who art the true 
and sovereign sweetness ; thou did'st expel them, and 
earnest in thyself instead of them, sweeter than any pleas- 
ure whatever, but not to flesh and blood ■ brighter than 
any light whatever, but more interior than any secret, 
higher than any dignity whatever, but not to those who 
are high in their own conceit. Now was my mind free 
from the gnawing cares of the ambition of honor, of the 
acquisition of riches, and of weltering in pleasures • and 
my infant tongue began to Lisp to thee, my Lord God, my 
true honor, my riches and my salvation." Augustine was 
about thirty-two years old when his conversion took place. 
It produced an instant change in his mode of life. With 
his mother, his brother, his son, and several of his intimate 
friends, he retired to a small village in the country, and 
there, all together, spent several months in beautiful, pas- 
toral seclusion. It was a convent in miniature, without 
the absurdities of convent life. They studied and con- 
versed and prayed together, each giving the other what he 
lacked, that the faith of the whole might be strengthened 
and purified. Augustine was foremost here in all the exer- 
cises of penitence. He changed his habits of life, became 
temperate, neat and frugal. The fire of his devotion 
burned steadily and brightly, and gave rise to the symbol 
which painters have joined to him, of a flaming heart. 
That eight months' retreat is the poetical passage of 
Augustine's life. He came back again at the Easter Festi- 
val a matured Christian in heart and faith. All things had 
become new before him ; and he received as a little child — 
though his manly son stood by his side to share the holy 
water — the seal of baptism from the hands of Ambrose. 
His parting from his spiritual father to go back to his 
native land, reminds us of the scene of Elijah and Elisha. 
They never met again, but the younger prophet took with 
him the mantle of the elder, and wore it as an angel-gift. 



AUGUSTINE. 89 



One more affecting passage remained to Augustine 
before he should enter upon the new work of his life. 
The mother who had watched and prayed, and waited for 
her desire and her joy to be full, could now say, like aged 
Simeon, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in 
peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." He has 
left us a beautiful picture of their closing interview. They 
talked about God and the spirit-world, about the com- 
munion of saints, about the joy of believing, and the son 
felt what he never felt before, that he could be calm even 
in the thought of losing his mother's earthly life, from the 
feeling that she would stay as an angel by his side. His 
heart felt desolate, indeed, when he closed her eyes and 
committed her body to the earth in the land of strangers. 
But, as he woke the next morning, he seemed to hear a 
choir of angels chanting the beautiful morning hymn of 
Ambrose, which thus begins : 

" Maker of all, the Lord, 

And Ruler of the height, 
Who, robing day in light, has poured 

Soft slumbers o'er the night ; 
That to our limbs the power 

Of Toil may be renewed, 
And hearts be raised that break and cower, 

And sorrows be subdued; " — 

and his own sorrow vanished at the sound, and he girded 
himself up with new zeal for his future Christian work. 

In the midst of the columns and fragments of the 
ancient city of Ostia, at the mouth of the Tiber, may be 
found to this day a chapel, which tradition points out as 
the spot where the last conversation with Monica was 
held, and whence her spirit took its upward flight. How 
much holier the association with this spot than with any 
mere burial place of mortal relics ! The dust of his mother 
was of little value to him who should become a teacher 
and a prophet unto men. But the memory of those part- 
ing words, years after the form had mouldered away, 
restored the sinking soul of the weary teacher, and made 
him confident and hopeful. 

I have dwelt thus long upon the first portion of Augus- 



9° AUGUSTINE. 



tine's life, because it has a peculiar interest as showing 
the influences under which his great and vigorous mind 
was formed. We may pass more rapidly over the remain- 
ing portion, though it is crowded with marvels of power, of 
labor, and of endurance. A hasty glance at its events 
will lead us to speak of its various forms of activity, its 
great results, and finally of the character and spirit of the 
saint. It is impossible in a trifling sketch to do justice to 
that which volumes have failed to do. The part of his 
life that we have thus far passed over makes hardly one- 
tenth of the work of his chief biographer. 

Augustine had nearly reached the middle age of life 
when he returned to his native land. He had left it a 
restless skeptic, driven by worldly ambition, a slave to his 
lusts, and with no high or noble aim, — feeling the hollow- 
ness of the praise with which his name was spoken, but 
not knowing where to find any better. He came back a 
serious, calm, and sober Christain, resolved henceforth to 
devote his talents, his zeal, his strength, to the spiritual 
teaching of his brethren and to the salvation of his soul. 
It was his desire to keep a retired life, and to assume no 
honor or office in the public gift. The death of his son 
soon freed him from all earthly ties. And he was like to 
have become a hermit thereupon. But his application to 
the study of the scriptures had made him so skillful in 
reading their meaning, that his fame was widely proclaimed, 
and he was often invited by the pious to come and talk 
with them about spiritual things. The nunnery which he 
founded, imitating in this St. Jerome of Bethlehem, also 
made his name dear to the Christians, and they began in 
many places to desire him for their bishop. One day he 
was sent for by a dying person at Hippo, a city some 
hundred miles from Carthage, to converse with him on the 
state of his soul. His words here were so full of wisdom 
and comfort, that, as he stood in the church, the people 
flocked round him and demanded with loud cries that the 
bishop should at once ordain him to be a priest. The 
urgencies of the people were so lively and violent that he 
could not resist; and, overcoming his scruples, he con- 
sented to devote those powers of rhetoric which he had 
before used for personal ambition, now to the service of 
God. 



AUGUSTINE, 91 



The bishop of the diocese, Valerius, who was an old 
man, at once appointed Augustine to preach in his own 
church. And from that time the episcopal church became 
a cathedral in the truest sense. For seven years the new 
priest stood there, day by day, and expounded the word of 
life to the waiting crowds. The enthusiasm with which 
his preaching was greeted was paralleled only by that 
which in another part of the empire, almost at the same 
time, waited upon John Chrysostom, the orator of the 
ancient Church. It grew continually stronger and stronger, 
till at last not alone the failing health of the old bishop, 
but the unanimous voice of the people demanded that 
Augustine should be secured to them in the highest seat of 
dignity and authority. In the forty-second year of his age 
he became the assistant bishop of Hippo, soon, by the 
death of his old friend, the sole occupant of the seat, — 
and soon, too, by the vigor of his pen, the watchfulness of 
his faith, and the profoundness of his wisdom, the virtual 
primate of the Christian world. Men looked henceforth 
to him for spiritual guidance, though they might refer to 
the Pope for temporal council. And for the remainder of 
his life he wielded an authority in the world of thought 
and doctrine unprecedented and unparalleled in the ancient 
Church. Hippo became henceforward to the Western 
Church what Alexandria had been to the Eastern. There 
was tried the truth of all speculations. There the heresies 
were judged, and there the standard of sound faith seemed 
to be promulgated. For thirty-five years Hippo remained 
the metropolis of faith to the world. The wise from the 
East and the West sent up thither to learn how to teach, 
and what to teach, and the opinion of the thinker there 
became the action of the whole Christian Church. 

The African Church, when Augustine became a bishop, 
was in the midst of its time of severest trial. The Dona- 
tist schism had robbed it of more than half of its most 
important churches, and four hundred bishops claimed and 
administered authority in that heretical name. Often 
severe and terrible conflicts took place, and blood was 
shed by brethren claiming the common heritage of Chris- 
tian love. Augustine set himself as his first great work of 
Episcopal duty to crush and extinguish this powerful 



9 2 AUGUSTINE. 



schism. It was a bold project, but he had learned from 
the beginning to labor and to wait. It was not by reckless 
denunciation or by stirring up the spirit of strife that he 
sought to accomplish, but rather in the gentler way of 
argument and suffrage. His pen was busy in refuting their 
claims, his tongue was eloquent to persuade them into 
duty. Knowing, too, that a house divided against itself 
cannot stand, he showed them that they had no internal 
agreement or bond of union. He accomplished in a little 
while what the persecution of more than a century had 
failed to do. At the great council at Carthage, in the 
year 411, at which nearly three hundred bishops of either 
party, Catholic and Donatists, were present, — the doctrine 
of the latter, through the influence of' Augustine, was 
formally condemned, — and the sect might have been ex- 
tinguished, but for that persecution, which followed it. 
This was against the desire of Augustine, who loved not to 
include pains and penalties in his condemnation of opin- 
ions. This Donatist controversy, however, was the least 
of those three in which the great powers of the bishop were 
called forth, — and his voluminous works against the Don- 
atists have for us little value, except as showing the spirit 
of the man. 

The controversy which he held with his old friends, the 
Manicheans, was one which taxed more of his intellectual 
strength. This involved the discussion of high philosophi- 
cal questions, and entered, too, into the domain of science. 
But his warfare with the Pelagian heresy is that which has 
kept his controversial fame forever in the Church. An 
outline of this heresy I gave in a previous lecture. Its 
authors were Pelagius and Celestius, — the one a British, 
and the other an Irish monk, — the one full of English 
shrewdness, the other full of Irish fire. The sentiments 
of the first were so skillfully softened that their diffusion 
became easy, while the boldness of the last soon procured 
his condemnation as a heretic. Pelagius' views on the doc- 
trine of the natural condition of man and the nature of 
sin were fundamentally opposite to the received Catholic 
view. He held that man by nature was pure and free, — 
that Adam's sin extended no farther than himself, — that 
each child born into the world was as innocent as the first 



AUGUSTINE. 93 



of men, — that all penal transgression was voluntary, — 
and that future reward would be measured by human 
merit, and not by the arbitrary grace of God. He main- 
tained, in the process of salvation, that the free-choice of 
man, and not the Special Spirit of God, was the first im- 
pulse, — and that every man had the materials in his own 
condition and powers for coming to the peace of the Chris- 
tian and the love of God, without any extraordinary action 
of grace. He did not intend in this to degrade God or 
his work, but rather to exalt man, made in the image of 
God. Perhaps the early associations of Pelagius had led 
him to this view. His Christian name, which was taken, 
according to the ancient custom, from the peculiarity of 
his residence, signifies a dweller by the sea. And it is 
there always that the dignity and glory of human nature 
are most felt and learned. There is something in the 
free, rolling ocean so self-sustaining, so majestic, that it 
seems to speak to the soul of a kindred self-sustaining 
power. The Pelagius of the modern Church, our. own 
Channing, confessed that his summer walks on the sound- 
ing shore of the beach at Newport, gave him the inspira- 
tion and the faith to speak to the Church of the dignity of 
man. 

But the views of Pelagius were better suited to the dis- 
tant tranquil shores of the lonely British Isle, than to the 
luxurious and sinful haunts of the civilized world. The 
Catholic doctrine that man was born with the curse of 
Adam on his soul, had been wrought out, not by Oriental 
speculation or Biblical reading merely, but by the long 
experience of manifold iniquities, great and small. The 
wickedness and woe of human life were more conspicuous 
in Italy and Greece and Africa than its native dignity; 
and the rumor even of a doctrine so flattering to the 
pride of the sinful heart, and so fatal in reconciling men 
to corruption, roused up the watchful guardians of the 
Church. From the East came the wrathful voice of 
Jerome in indignant protest ; from Rome Papal edicts ful- 
minated anathemas against its daring supporters • and 
from Hippo, in Africa, came the word of entreaty, remon- 
strance and refutation. 

Augustine had long: been forced as a convert from the 



94 AUGUSTINE. 



Manicheans, who were the successors of the Stoics in 
their belief of an omnipotent destiny, and the precursors 
of Calvin, Priestley and Edwards in their doctrine of 
necessity, and human inability, to assert manfully the free- 
will of man. He had made this the central truth of his 
theological system. And he now brought it into a new 
and peculiar use, — not logically consistent, but good for 
an antagonist principle of the saving grace of God. 
Augustine maintained that all sin came from the original 
free-will of man ; that man, and not God, was the author 
of evil ; and that the will of Adam was truly the will of 
his race. He held that so obstinately independent was 
this moral determination of the human race, that only a 
divine leading could draw it back again to virtue. But 
very soon he found that the ardor of his reasoning drew 
him into a denial of what had so long been his favorite 
view. He ended the controversy a predestinarian in his 
dogma, and from him now men gather the most striking 
hints in the ancient Church of election, decrees, and the 
whole catalogue of doctrines which Calvin afterwards 
reduced to system. He could -really sustain the theory of 
original sin on no other ground. For if man be born into 
the world with positive depravity, for which he shall here- 
after be punished, then is there transgression which is 
independent of his own choice. The manner of Augus- 
tine's conversion might have impressed his heart more 
sensibly with the efficacy and need of God's supernatural 
grace. But it was probably the deep-seated conviction 
that the theory of human purity would not explain the 
fact of such wide and growing corruption, which made his 
doctrine more acceptable than that of Pelagius. A falling- 
world could not behold that bright view, which free and 
holy Nature inspires. And Scripture, read in its profligate 
cities, would take a darker impression of life than is 
found in the view of the foreign heretic. Augustine, 
silenced by his relations of personal experience, and by 
his ingenious logic, the prophetic wisdom of his foe. 
When Pelagius was condemned by successive councils, the 
doctrine of native depravity became fixed in the Church. 
But even his mighty authority was not able to restrain the 
pure and the holy from feeling that God had made them 



AUGUSTINE. 95 



happy by his original grace before even any special work 
of redemption was done. The penitent sinner that had 
passed through an experience such as his, might come to 
feel that it was a miraculous change from perfect' darkness 
to perfect light.' But the heart of his mother was true to a 
higher instinct, when she trusted, even in the midst of 
his voluntary transgressions, in that native goodness 
and piety which she knew was waiting in his heart to be 
called forth. She knew when she prayed that his heart 
was not wholly evil. The mother's instinct denies forever 
the doctrine of native sin. There is the dearest earthly 
home of the heresy. Among the angels on high the doc- 
trine never enters. 

But we turn from the controversies of Augustine to 
speak of his two great works, by which his fame has been 
made immortal, — which the heretic as well as the Catho- 
lic, the infidel not less than the Christian, can read with 
admiration, the "Confessions," and the "City of God." It 
is upon these that his reputation as an author mainly rests. 
In size they together form but an insignificant fragment, 
compared with the rest of his works. But they concen- 
trate the beauty, the eloquence, the pathos, and the power 
of all the rest. The Confessions were written at the age 
of forty-three, shortly after he became bishop. They are a 
faithful portraiture of his life up to this period, — not of 
his earthly life merely or chiefly, but of his spiritual life 
much more, the truest life of every man. They are not 
like most autobiographies or narratives for other men to 
read, but rather a conversation with God about past ex- 
periences, thought and emotions. They are not a confes- 
sion before men, but before God. They are a spiritual 
analysis of his life in the Past, with its promise for the 
future. They mention circumstances only as these show the 
growth and the working of character and faith. And it is 
hard, therefore, for one who takes them up, as he would 
the story of an ordinary life, to get interested in them at 
once. They are a mixture of penitence, praise, and prayer. 
They show the frame of mind in which a soul is brought 
which has renounced self, and submitted wholly to God. 
The details would appear to us needlessly revolting and 
minute, were we to think of them as set down for the 



96 AUGUSTINE. 



interest of men, — but they become sincere and just, when 
they are seen to point towards God and his mercy. You 
can frame from the Confessions of Augustine no good 
account of his time ; and when you have finished reading 
them, you seem to have lost your idea of when and where 
their subject lived ; the elements of time and place seem 
to have been almost annihilated. You are rather brought 
into the presence of an intense spiritual consciousness, — 
and made to see the process of a soul in flinging itself 
clear of mortal incumbrances, and gaining the place of 
pure spirit before God. One by one, the ties to earth seem 
to be unbound, and as you close the book, you seem to 
have been absorbed in a dream of heaven. In this modern 
day, more than one have attempted to imitate the method 
of the African saint. Reinhard, the German preacher; 
Rousseau, the French infidel, and inferior writers, not a 
few, have laid before the world their private experience in 
the form of Confessions. But you are struck at once with 
the notable difference between the direction of their works 
and the work of Augustine. They have the amusement 
or the admiration of men in view. He had only the ap- 
probation of God. They transport you into the scenes 
and times in which they spoke and acted. He brings him- 
self home rather to your time as a spiritual brother. 

One writer beautifully compares his book to the nebulas 
in the heavens above us, in which no single star in its rela- 
tion to other stars is actually defined, but in the dim light 
of which are gathered the forms of many unknown worlds. 
The Confessions of Rousseau leave upon you the clear 
and distinct consciousness of a selfish, worldly, and bitter 
spirit. You feel that the trust of this man was in earthly 
joys, and that even his pretence of humility was only a 
morbid craving for sympathy and admiration. He seems 
to be proud and desirous of applause even in the relation 
of his vices. The Confessions of Augustine, on the con- 
trary, lift you up to the mystical table-land of the soul, — ■ 
appeal to your own sense of error, and linger in your 
memory as some vision of the spirit world. The work 
may be called, in fact, an epitomized history of the human 
soul. It is a study for the philosopher, — a manual for 
the devotee. It has been analyzed in the schools, — and 



AUGUSTINE. 97 



has for ages been the chosen companion for the closet. 
Age has invested it with no savor of antiquity, it is a voice 
to ns from that eternal world which never grows old. It 
cannot be read in every state of mind. There is nothing 
of historical or romantic attraction about it. To com- 
mon sense it is a dreaming rhapsody. But the spiritual 
sense will find in it the soaring of spiritual desire up 
to its native seat on high. 

The great work of Augustine was "The City of God." 
For eighteen years he was occupied on this, the majestic 
prose epic of Christian antiquity. It was first conceived 
when the shock of the barbarian devastation of Rome had 
reached his ears. It is like the great epics of Homer, a 
funeral oration for the Past, a Christian prophecy for the 
Future. It bids adieu to the Pagan world ; it opens the 
reign of the Christian state. It is impossible here to give 
even an analysis of so great a work, extending through 
twenty-two books, and crowded with so much learning. 
By illustrations, by arguments, by analogies of every kind, 
he shows how weak and worthless is any faith which is not 
pervaded by the central idea of a spiritual God. He makes 
the whole course of former falsehood, folly, and supersti- 
tion, a witness to the divine truth. It is one of those 
books of which we may say, as was said of Varro, the 
author of "Antiquities of Rome," that it shows so much 
reading, that we wonder how he had leisure to write it. 
Read in the light of modern history, it seems one long 
prophecy of the triumphs of the Cross. It unfolds the 
doctrine of Christian progress, shows the glories of a true 
Christian civilization, the blessings of peace and its arts, — 
and the future triumph of the soul of man over its 
material closes. He shows that all true influence for o-ood 
comes from virtue in the heart, that character is greater 
than condition, and that man becomes noble by what he 
is, and not by what is around him. "The City of God" 
reminds us of that ancient custom of Egypt, by which 
they judged their kings before proceeding to bury them. It 
stands as a solemn judge of the gods of the former world 
and the kings of human thought; shows to the one their 
weakness in upholding the men who adored them, to the 
other their impatience in seeking to soar to the eternal 
7 



98 AUGUSTINE 



truth on the wings of genius alone, — and declares their 
final sentence. Then it sings their funeral song and sits 
on their sepulchre, sealed with its own powerful hand. 

It is a spiritual paradise which the " City of God " 
spreads out before men, — no sensual Eden, — but rather 
a kingdom of ideas and sacred sentiments, of righteous- 
ness, temperance, peace, and freedom. It is striking to 
us now, who live in an age when the question of human 
liberty is the absorbing topic of thought, to read the noble 
testimony borne by the most eminent Christian teacher in 
an age of comparative darkness. Augustine denounces 
slavery as belonging to a heathen State. It has to him no 
justification in the laws of Christian grace ; it is the sad 
penalty of human degeneracy, but justified by no com- 
mand of God. For God has said: "Let man have 
dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and 
the beasts of the earth," — but he has nowhere said, "Let 
man have dominion over his brother man." Every prog- 
ress towards virtue will be a progress towards freedom; 
and as the truths of the Gospel are developed before men, 
so will liberty be vindicated and established. But a whole 
lecture would be needed to give you an idea of this 
wonderful work of Augustine, so fertile in fancies, so full of 
learning, so rich in suggestion, so oracular in its utterances 
of the profoundest truths, so broad in its faith, so far-reach- 
ing in its spiritual vision, — the picture of a Christian 
republic, the ideal of heaven made actual among men. 
As the minor poems of Milton to the " Paradise Lost," so 
are the " Confessions " of Augustine to the " City of God." 
The first give you the inward life and aspiration of the 
man ; the last is his whole majestic work. The Emperor 
Charlemagne declared it the greatest effort of human 
genius. 

We cannot give even the titles of the other works of 
Augustine, of the thousands of sermons, preaching, as he 
did, twice every day for years, of the innumerable letters 
and tracts on every variety of topic, addressed to every 
quarter of the world. We should love to linger over the 
controversy with Jerome about the sincerity of Paul in his 
anti-Jewish speeches, — -not for the matter thereof, so much 
as showing the striking contrasts between the tempers of 



AUGUSTINE, 99 



these two great men, — how sweetly the mild firmness of 
Augustine conquered the hot sensitiveness of the Monk of 
Bethlehem. As the proof of his poetical abilities, which 
are shown in some hymns of extraordinary length, we 
quote only his hymn, entitled "The Antidote for Sin." 
The translation is nearly literal : 

Tyrant ! Shall thy threatenings harm me ? 

Every grief and every pain, 
Every wile thou weavest to charm me, 

All against my love are vain. 
This can bid me brave the terror, 

This to die, my soul can nerve, 
Better death, than prosperous error, 

Mightier is the power of love. 

Bring the rack, the scourge, the fagot, 

Lift on high the fatal Cross, 
Calm before these foes so haggard, 

Still my love shall fear no loss. 
This can turn aside the terror, 

This to weakness shall not move, 
Better death than shameful error, 

Mightier is the power of love. 

When with love my heart is burning, 

Heaviest woes seem all too bright, 
Hasty death, a quick returning 

Home from darkness into light. 
Then life's changes bring no terror, 

Trials turn my soul above, 
Better death than wearying error, 

Holier is the joy of love. 

But in our admiration for the genius and wisdom of 
Augustine, which, in a life of signal activity, seemed to 
gain all the fruits of the most secret contemplation, in our 
amazement at finding that this thinker of the fifth cen- 
tury anticipated not only the theological thought of the 
fifteenth century, but the practical wisdom of this nine- 
teenth as well, in our wonder at this ancient writer 
defending the modern doctrine of progress, we almost 
overlook and forget the actual life and character of the 
man. His intellectual greatness seems even to eclipse his 
serene and beautiful holiness of life and walk. His was 
one of those finely-balanced characters, the excesses of 
which fall harmlessly. He was severe in self-scrutiny, but 



AUGUSTINE. 



charitable in his judgment of others. In his own life his 
mistakes were magnified to sins; in the lives of his flock, 
often his fatherly kindness would soften seeming sins to 
pardonable errors. He was a theologian without being a 
dogmatist, he was a bishop without being a lord. Rigid 
in his own private morality, he insisted far less than the 
Christian of his time on the need of an ascetic life for 
others. He was a foe to suicide in any form, whether in 
the sudden act, or in the wearing mortification of the flesh. 
He was a sincere friend and an open foe, — accusing him- 
self often without cause, but always excusing others. 
From his own apparent harshness, he was the severest 
sufferer. He practiced upon and proved the Scripture 
precept, that a soft answer turneth wrath away. Busy in 
the affairs of the world, he seemed above the world while 
he lived in it. His home was always a house of prayer. 
There were brother hermits that dwelt there, but those who 
visited it seemed rather to see angels than hermits. In- 
deed, Augustine was one of those men who are usually 
conceived of as accompanied by some good spirit. I have, 
from Murillo, an engraving of him, which represents him 
as in his pontifical robes and insignia, bending to an 
angel, in the form of a little child with a shell in its hand, 
who says : " I could as soon empty the ocean with my 
shell as you explain the mystery of one God in three 
persons." 

Augustine had in his own age a most extraordinary in- 
fluence. He was the arbiter of disputes, — the idol of all 
the faithful. He lived at Hippo, in Africa,' like Plato in 
another Athens. But, on the faith of all succeeding ages, 
he has had an influence greater than that of any ancient 
Christian. He wrote no creed, and he preached and coun- 
selled liberty and progress. But from the hints and the 
views, which lie so thickly in his voluminous works, the 
sternest creeds of the Christian world have been wrought 
out. The Catholic and the Calvinist alike claim him as 
the father of their several systems. The great Council of 
Trent, which confirmed the Bible of Jerome as the text 
for Catholic reading, confirmed also the dogmas of Augus- 
tine as the substance of Catholic faith. In the great 
controversy between the Jesuits and the Jansenists, which 



AUGUSTINE. 



agitated for half a century the Church of France, Molina 
quoted the words, and Pascal quoted the thoughts, of the 
Bishop of Hippo. Our own Edwards girded the loins of 
his mighty mind with the strong proof- armor of his 
ancient prototype. The visions of the calm and passion- 
less Swedenborg were made clearer by the mystical 
raptures of the ''Confessions/' and even modern Fourier- 
ism will translate for its advantage the Utopian beauties 
of the " City of God." Still the views of Pelagius are a 
heresy, and the Churches of the world confess in word, if 
they do not in spirit, that man, according to the sentiment 
of Augustine, is born a sinner, and can do no good thing 
till the grace of God shall raise him again. 

The last great work of St. Augustine's life was to com- 
pose his book of " Retractions." In this, with a truly 
Catholic spirit, he reviews all his former writings, taking 
back all that is doubtful, extravagant, or offensive, — har- 
monizing discordant opinions, — and seeking to winnow 
out the essential from the accumulated stores, or chaff, as 
he deemed them, of years. He had reached his three- 
score years and ten, and felt that, though his eye was not 
dim nor his faith yet failing, still the natural time of his 
departure was drawing nigh. He, perhaps, had a vision of 
his future influence in thus fixing and correcting his mani- 
fold labors. It was his last testament to his Church. It 
was his permanent legacy to the world. 

In the year 430 of the Christian era, the barbaric inva- 
sion which had overrun the other provinces of the Roman 
Empire, at last broke upon the shores of Africa. And 
there its course was one of fearful and utter ravage. The 
cities fell before it, — the churches were hopelessly scat- 
tered, and the curse that Dido had uttered a thousand 
years before, was at last fulfilled. Carthage and its regions 
of beauty became desert again. For some time Hippo 
escaped the fate of the other cities. But at last, as the 
sails of Genseric and his Vandals appeared on the waters 
of the bay,, the bishop was struck with his final disease. 
Months long the siege of the city continued. But long 
before it was ended, the body of the holy comforter 
therein had been laid in its final sleep. So quietly had he 
passed away, that the noise of his death was hardly heard 



AUGUSTINE. 



in the terror for their future. But when they came to 
choose another bishop, then the grief of the people became 
anguish ■ they forgot their danger, and broke out in words 
of bitter despair. 

We have the conversations of Augustine in his final 
hour faithfully reported by his friend Possidius, who 
watched by the bedside. They are full of faith and 
beauty, and far more precious than those sacred relics of 
which such peculiar care has been taken, and which have 
received in these latter days such peculiar honors. We are 
more thankful for the Providence which saved the works 
from the hands of Vandals, than that which spared the 
bones of Augustine from desecration. It were a long and 
needless narrative to follow the translation of the bones 
through many chances and miraculous discoveries, to their 
honorable place in the cathedral at Pavia, where now they 
mostly rest, — working miracles to the credulous, but of 
small value to the traveller, who has been wearied already 
with the multitude of such holy treasures. Perhaps some 
of you read some twenty-five years since, in the papers, of 
the great and pompous ceremony of the restoration of the 
bones of St. Augustine's right arm, with which his brilliant 
works were written, to the church at Bona, on the site of 
ancient Hippo. It was a remarkable pageant, and must 
have greatly edified the turbaned Arabs of Algiers. A 
long company of bishops and priests, with steam frigates 
and splendid music, must have seemed a singular specta- 
cle as they bore so simple a relic. But if the soul of 
Augustine were in that company, it must have rejoiced to 
see the beautiful region of ancient faith now again, 
after ages of darkness, restored to its former hope, and the 
banner of the Cross again unfurled in the land of his love, 
which the heathen had profaned. 

I close this lecture, already too long, I fear, for your 
patience, though a most inadequate presentation of a most 
inspiring theme, by repeating the short comparison which 
the French biographer has drawn between the works of 
St. Augustine and of the saintly Thomas a. Kempis, a 
classic of the closet. He says : " This voice, coming from 
ancient Africa, and the echo of which is so magnificent 
and wide, instructs and moves us most in a book which 



AUGUSTINE. 103 



does not bear the name of Augustine, but evidently has 
sprung from the influence of his genius. This book is the 
" Imitation of Christ." The profound humility which 
lifts us to the greatest mysteries, the love of truth which 
puts every created thing to silence and will listen to God 
alone, — the method of reading wisely the Sacred Scrip- 
tures, the little confidence to be placed in man, — the self- 
denial and charity for all, — the raptures of inward peace 
and a conscience pure, the joys of silence and solitude, — 
the separation from visible goods and patience in suffer- 
ings, — the soaring of the soul towards eternal and immu- 
table beauty, — the tender and sublime communion of the 
soul with its God, — all that is gentle, profound and com- 
forting in this work, which has no acknowledged author, as 
if heaven would dispute it with earth, — all this delicious 
study of the hidden Christian springs, is filled with the 
soul of St. Augustine. When I read the " Imitation of 
Jesus Christ," it seems to me that it is Augustine who is 
speaking."* 

* When Italy was invaded by Vandals in the fifth century, the bones 
of Monica were transported to Rome. In the great medieval church, 
which bears the name of St. Augustine, near the Tiber, not only does 
the curious visitor go to admire the pictures of Guercino, and the 
masterly fresco of Isaiah by Raphael, but to gaze with amazement 
upon the thousand of votive offerings hung before and around the 
miracle-working picture of the Madonna, from the hand of Luke, the 
Apostolic painter, of every device and form. But I remember a 
deeper emotion in standing in one of the side chapels, before the urn 
of verd antique, which hold the relics of the mother of Augustine. 

In the gallery of the Vatican, there is a little oval picture, which 
represents Monica leading her son to school, one of the most curious 
art remains of the fourteenth century. 

One of the greatest pictures of that gentle son of genius now passed 
away, Ary Scheffer, represents Augustine seated by Monica, with 
his hand clasped in hers, looking up with her to heaven with an expres- 
sion which seems to say, " Help thou my unbelief." Well might the 
queen of France count it good fortune, for ^1000, to get possession of 
this picture. 

In the Academy at Venice is another striking picture, which repre- 
sents Augustine, with his mitre, and Monica, with her veil, supporting 
on either hand the enraptured Mother of Christ. 



104 SYMBOLISM. 



III. 

SYMBOLISM OF THE CHURCH. 

The use of symbols is not an artificial, but a natural 
use. It belongs to the physical condition of man, and 
can no more be outgrown, than the body can be outgrown 
by the spirit, or the senses by the understanding. It is 
essential to this complex nature of ours, and is the avenue 
by which the spiritual world is reached. Philosophically 
viewed, all things around us are symbols, — the sun and 
planets, the earth and its fruits, — the inarticulate sounds 
of Nature, — the spoken words of man, — all are signs of 
ideas, — and all bridge over for man the chasm between 
matter and thought. The utter absence of all symbols 
implies death. He who shall really see spiritual realities, 
must be in the spiritual world. While he is in the 
natural world, he can only see them through their signs. 
If you think of this for a little while, you will see that it is 
true. But in the matter of religion, and particularly in the 
order of worship, it has always been an admitted fact. 
No nation has yet been discovered without some religious 
form, some sign of worship or faith. The most rude and 
the most cultivated races have alike found emblems need- 
ful for their prayer and praise. The Labrador savage, the 
Russian serf, and the Roman cardinal, are alike in their 
necessity of using these emblems. And that red Indian, 
whom the French traveller saw kneeling alone at evening 
on the shore of a Canadian river, with arms outstretched 
toward the setting sun, felt the need of symbolic worship, 
as he who kneels beneath the studded dome of St. Peter, 
and before its blazing altar, with myriads of holy men 
around him. 

It is a common, but an erroneous idea, that the need of 
symbols grows less as men become wiser and more spiritual 
in their tastes. The very opposite of this is true. Educa- 



SYMBOLISM. 105 



tion and refinement tend to increase the number, and to 
widen the province, of symbols. These are fewest and 
simplest when the wants of man are fewest and simplest. 
Prayer belongs to the idea of God. And wherever this 
idea exists, you will find some kind of prayer. But in 
savage life, the principal fact is death. That is the only 
thing which is of much importance. The eating and 
drinking, the daily occupations of the savage, are very 
much like those of the brutes, merely animal. The only 
thing in which the soul within him is really much interested, 
is the death of his enemies and his friends. And conse- 
quently, you find that the symbols of savage life are mostly 
those connected with war and its results. They smoke 
the pipe of peace, or they utter the scream of battle, 
and bury their dead with peculiar emblems. Their visible 
worship seems to be almost wholly connected with these. 
But the progress from savage to cultivated life brings other 
events and occasions into equal prominence. Worship 
comes gradually to be associated with a greater variety of 
scenes. It needs many signs, because it has so many 
ideas to express and so many needs to meet. Churches 
that would do very well in Lapland would not do in 
London, even for the poorest class of the people. It is a 
principle that reason shows very readily to be sound, 
that genuine culture only increases the need of signs, 
and the number, too. The ignorant boor can worship only 
before his wooden cross. But the enlightened Christian 
finds all God's universe a temple, and everything round 
him a sign of religion. 

We are not to infer, however, from the increase of sym- 
bols, either in number or beauty, increased purity of spirit 
or sincerity of faith. For a great many things may appear 
to be signs that are not really so, or have ceased to be 
what they were once. The Cross on the altar is pro- 
perly a sign, but may, and does very often become an idol. 
Those emblems that represent to a truly religious mind 
many high spiritual conceptions, may still be retained and 
prized when they represent nothing, but are merely exter- 
nal ornaments. To most, no doubt, the tablets upon the 
wall in churches are rich in religious suggestions. But to 
some they are only gilt letters on a ground of stone-color, 



io6 SYMBOLISM. 



and arc admired not for their meaning, but for their beauty 
of outside show. Culture demands more symbols than 
ignorance. But the increase of symbols is governed by 
another law than the progress of culture. And a luxuri- 
ous ritual has in every age been far from indicating great 
spiritual elevation in the Church. All its forms have been 
the product no doubt of some intention. They have not 
been brought in without a spiritual purpose. And all too 
no doubt have religious value to many minds. There was 
nothing so absurd in the Catholic sendee of the middle 
ages, that it had not to some minds a really religious sig- 
nificance. But a vast number of the forms that have 
spiritual uses were invented for purposes of deception, or 
ecclesiastical influence. The skill of cunning priests gave 
food to superstition, while it made the ritual or the Church 
more splendid. And when darkness was upon the minds 
and hearts of the civilized world, and nations were break- 
ing up in terror, then the gorgeousness of piety became all 
the more striking. 

The first Christian communities, those of the Apostles, 
had very few set forms. They met without any special 
appointment, and there was no order of anything to be 
done, but each man spake as he was moved by the Holy 
Ghost. The time was every day, if they could manage 
this, the place was any secure and quiet room, usually the 
house of some of the more prominent Christians. The 
meeting was for mutual instruction and conversation, 
they talked about the Saviour, and took counsel what they 
should do to spread his Gospel. The first Church meeting 
was a conference meeting. They met merely in a free, 
friendly way to talk over their duties, their dangers, and 
their experience, and to encourage each other unto perse- 
verance. They sat together as brethren always sat, 
remembering the injunction of their departed Master, 
though in no formal way. 

But this simplicity of worship could last only a little 
while. As soon as converts began to multiply, private 
houses were not large enough for a general meeting, and 
special places were set apart. The poverty of most of the 
converts prevented these places from being costly, and 
persecution in many parts forced them to keep their places 



SYMBOLISM. 107 



of worship secluded. And when therefore the fury of their 
enemies would not permit them to gather in some special 
building, they were wont to meet in caves or in tombs, 
which were sometimes built very large. They worshipped 
in the catacombs at Rome. It was not till three hundred 
years after Christ that the Church buildings had become 
at all conspicuous, or had begun to rival Pagan temples 
either in beauty or convenience. They were probably, 
except in solidity and in natural grace of structure, edi- 
fices about as ornamental as the Congregational churches 
of the last century in this country, of which you will find 
specimens still standing. The early Christians were too 
much harassed and tried to think much about the exter- 
nals of their sacred house. 

So too as their numbers multiplied, and men of various 
humble trades were converted, who could not spare their 
time from daily labor, there grew up the practice of meeting 
at regular intervals. The Jews had always had a weekly 
Sabbath. And the reverence which the first disciples bore 
for this was soon transferred to the first day of the week, the 
day on which our Saviour rose from the dead. Though 
the Gentiles had not, like the Jews, a Sabbatical notion, 
still they divided their weeks into seven days, and fell 
readily into the observances. And convenience and fitness, 
not less than reverence, dictated the observance of this 
day. It became soon the regular day of religious meeting, 
and was uniformly regarded. And soon too the idea of 
a festival, was attached to it. 

Saturday, the old Jewish Sabbath, became a fast day, 
and a preparation for the great feast of Sunday. Men 
could not be other than joyful on the day of their Lord's 
resurrection. Sunday was the fixed festival. But soon 
the spirit both of old Roman and Jewish antiquity sug- 
gested more imposing festivals at greater intervals. The 
first of these was Easter Sunday, which is really to the 
year what Sunday is to the week, its sacred beginning. 
Easter is the Annual Sunday. You know that the Jews 
had their Sabbatical year as well as their weekly Sab- 
bath. This festival came into vogue sometime before the 
close of the first century. Then arose Whitsunday, the 
Christian Pentecost, which came seven weeks after Easter. 



io8 SYMBOLISM. 



These two, with the Lord's day, continued to be the occa- 
sions of ecclesiastical meeting and rejoicing up to the 
time of Constantine. Christmas did not come into the 
Church till a later period. 

There was in the beginning no set form of worship. 
But it was quite natural that the Sacred Scriptures should 
be open for counsel, and that some brother, more gifted 
than the rest, should address the company. By a very 
swift and obvious process, this became to be understood as 
a settled thing. And the meeting of the early Church was 
conducted by reading from the Scriptures, by an exhorta- 
tion, from some one or more of the brethren (it is called 
by St. Paul the gift of prophecy), — by audible prayers, 
which were offered as the spirit moved, and by very 
frequent singing. But gradually as the writings of the 
Christian teachers accumulated, they were added to the 
sacred records, and the Canon of the New Testament was 
made by custom complete before it was fixed by any 
special statute. For convenience sake, the old Jewish 
method of dividing the Scriptures into lessons was resorted 
to, and then finally certain passages assigned to each 
particular Sunday, as there are now in the prayer-book. A 
special man was after a while set apart to take charge of 
the reading, chosen probably for his gifts in that regard. 
For the case then was as common as now, that he who 
could preach most effectively could not always read with 
most eloquence and expression. You will find this dis- 
tinction between the reader and the rabbi, or priest, still 
kept in the Jewish synagogues. Very different men are 
chosen to these two offices. This was the custom at the 
end of the third century. Selections from the canonical 
Scriptures were regularly read by a person appointed for 
that purpose. The canonical Scriptures then consisted of 
the books which we have in our collection, and no other 
writings were allowed to be read, as books of devotion, in 
the house of God. 

The sermons of the early Church were, in the begin- 
ning, mere unpremeditated exhortations to perseverance, 
patience and the practice of all virtues. Their end was 
excitement and action, and not instruction. They were 
probably much in the strain of the practical epistles of 



SYMBOLISM. 109 



Paul. From this they passed on to the expository style, — ■ 
and became explanations of the various lessons that were 
read from Scripture. Of this kind are nearly all the 
homilies of the earlier fathers. The main thing was to 
interpret and to understand the Scripture. This kind of 
preaching had reached its climax at the time of Constan- 
tine. The proper person for preaching was the bishop, if 
there were one to the church. It was as much part of his 
business to preach as to oversee his flock. And it was not 
expected that in his presence any priest or deacon would 
take that duty. Exceptions to this were afterwards 
allowed, as in the case of Augustine. But every faithful 
bishop was expected to preach every Sunday at least once, 
and frequently in the week. Fast-days and feast-days were 
days for preaching too as well as Sunday. 

In the beginning several sermons were delivered at the 
same service. But by and by, as certain men established 
a peculiar reputation for eloquence, the people preferred 
to hear them alone all the time that was before allotted to 
several in succession ; and the two hours were taken up 
with single sermons when such men as Basil and Chrysos- 
tom entered the pulpit. The pulpits however of the first 
churches was a simple table or reading-desk, and the 
preacher sat behind it, and expounded as he read the pas- 
sage through. 

Sometimes, however, there was preaching in the open 
air. And then the fork of a tree, the top of a column, a 
sepulchral monument, or a precipice on the hill side, were 
the places chosen by the speaker. Mars Hill, where Paul 
preached to the people of Athens, is a wonderful natural 
pulpit. The gentleman who addressed you last evening 
told me that he never knew a place more admirably 
adapted for a most effective discourse. 

Preaching in the open air was not much liked by the 
bishops, but was pursued chiefly by the monks, especially 
by the heretical and mystic monks, who were in their 
practices to the Church at large what the Methodists 
were to the English Church of the last century. The 
regular preachers commonly used the hour-glass to tell 
them when their time was over, — a custom, the disuse of 
which in this day is somewhat to be regretted. 



no SYMBOLISM. 



The exact opposite of the present position of the 
speaker and audience prevailed. The speaker sat and the 
people stood all around. This seems to have been the 
custom from the earlier times. And this is perhaps one 
reason why the hour-glass was so important. This most 
uncomfortable practice probably came from a reverential 
feeling. They had learned from the Jews to stand during 
the reading of the Scriptures, and they would think it 
equally becoming to stand during the interpretation thereof. 
There were Scripture precedents for this position too. 
Was not Jesus found sitting in the temple, with the doctors 
standing around him ? Did he not sit when from the ship 
he taught the people standing on the shore ? Was it not 
in that position that he spoke to them from the Mount of 
Olives ? This was the condition of preaching at the end 
of the third century. 

The prayers of the Church were at first spontaneous 
ejaculations, short and earnest entreaties, — with no set 
form or method. The sacred sentences of the Scriptures, 
which were diligently studied and committed to memory 
by persons of all ages and conditions soon however 
made an essential and principal part of the service of 
prayer. The Lord's Prayer and the Apostolic benediction 
were very freely used. There is no evidence nevertheless 
that at the time of Constantine anything like a regular liturgy 
had been formed. The prayers in the religious service 
were generally two in number beside the Lord's prayer, — 
one just at the commencement of the sermon, when the 
preacher had announced his intention of expounding the 
particular passage which had been read, and would ask 
the blessing of heaven and God's aid in his attempt, and 
the other, at the close of the sermon, that its influence 
might be for good. This custom prevails now in the Ger- 
man and the French Churches. And it sometimes in their 
Churches confuses one, who is not accustomed to it, to 
hear the preacher, just after he has finished the introduc- 
tion to his discourse, break suddenly into a prayer. 

During the first two centuries prayers were made almost 
exclusively to God the Father, — in the name of Christ. 
It would have been considered in the Apostolic Church 
almost impiety to have addressed worship to any other. 



SYMBOLISM. Hi 



But when philosophical speculations and controversies 
got into the Church, then Christ himself became the object 
of prayer. It was these theological controversies that 
brought on at last thaj kind of idolatry which ended in 
the worship of the Virgin, of martyrs and of relics. 

That part of the worship in which the people were wont 
to join, were the responses and the singing. In the 
earliest Church these responses were two, — the Amen 
and the Hallelujah. The Amen was ejaculated by the 
people at the end of prayers, the sermons and the 
reading, and at the close of the doxologies or benedic- 
tions. Sometimes it was shouted after the rite of baptism 
and the administration of the Supper. It comes from a 
Hebrew word, signifying, " So let it be." The Hallelu- 
jah is a word which means " praise the Lord," and is 
derived from those Psalms, from one hundred and thirteen 
to one hundred and eighteen, that were sung at the Passo- 
ver, — called the Great Hallel. The tradition was that 
Jesus sang this Hallel with his disciples at the Last Sup- 
per. It gradually became a common ejaculation, and at 
last its use was so annoying that by authority it was 
restricted to the period between Easter and Whitsunday. 
In the Greek Church it was rather an ejaculation of grief 
and of penitence ; in the Latin Church it denoted Thanks- 
giving, and its proper meaning was regarded. There were 
other ejaculations that came into use afterwards, but these 
were all that are found in the first period of Christian 
history. 

But the part of the worship which the first Christians 
loved best, was their singing. In this all seemed to be 
equal and brethren together. Some were too simple to un- 
destand, and too ignorant to interpret, the truths of the 
Gospel. But the most unlettered could join in the Psalms 
and Hymns, — children of tender years, as well as those 
who bore the burdens of the flock. It was an inherited 
love. In the Jewish ritual the whole service was chanted. 
And the first collection of sacred songs was the book of 
Psalms, which had always been kept separate from the 
Law and the Prophets. These the Christians were never 
weary of rehearsing together. They were not sung to 
metrical tunes, but were rather chanted, — sometimes in a 



H2 SYMBOLISM. 



low and monotonous key, — sometimes breaking into the 
anthem of rapture. Probably the spirit of the singing was 
better than the melody. 

In the third century the great men of the Church began 
to write hymns, which were first sung by the faithful in 
their own houses, and afterwards introduced into the 
public service. At the time of Constantine however the 
policy of Arius had brought into worship a great number 
of these hymns, mostly of a doctrinal character. The 
Catholics found it prudent to take advantage of the love 
for music to counteract heresy. No instrument was used 
except the human voice. The various methods of the 
Jews to produce a harmonious accompaniment were all set 
aside. 

The method was something like the old-fashioned New 
England method, when the deacon used to stand in front 
of the altar and read the lines for the congregation to 
sing. That practice was found necessary as new hymns 
increased in the Church. The custom of choir-singing 
took its rise when they began to chant the responses. The 
congregation then divided into two parts and chanted in 
turn the separated verses of the Psalms and Hymns. But 
for the three centuries after the death of Christ there was 
nothing like our present choirs in the Church. The con- 
gregation stood while singing, and in fact this seems to 
have been the posture in all parts of the service, except 
the administration of the Supper. 

The early Church had only two services that could be 
called rites. And even one of these was not so in the 
beginning. Baptism of course was from the first a sym- 
bol, not having value in itself, but kept up for its religious 
significance. It was not only an inherited custom from 
the Jewish worship, but was believed to be expressly 
enjoined by the Saviour. It was confined at first to adults, 
and administered usually just before admitting them to 
partake of the Sacrament. For the first two centuries it 
was a public rite, and all could witness it. After that it 
became one of the religious mysteries, and was applied to 
infants as well as adults. When this had come, the place 
was changed, and what had before been performed in the 
was now performed in an artificial pool 



SYMBOLISM. 113 



within the church or house. Immersion was the primitive 
method. But I will not weary you by going into details 
upon what has been so fruitful a theme of such useless 
controversy. 

The disputes about baptism have done very much to 
weaken respect for the ordinance. But it is still now as 



ever one of the most touching, beautiful and significant of 
all religious services. It is a rite which the Church can 
never outgrow, and in some form or other it will keep its 
place. The method is of comparatively small importance, 
but the rite itself is one that cannot be dispensed with. 
And as we have come now to a general belief of the reli- 
gious theory that men are made holy rather by education 
into holiness than by sudden conversion, so there is all the 
more reason why we should observe the rite of infant bap- 
tism, which is the symbol and the pledge of religious 
education. 

It would require too a separate and a long lecture even 
to sketch the history of the rite of the Lord's Supper, — 
to show how that which was the most simple of friendly 
meals became the most sublime and awful of mysteries, — 
how the communion became the mass, and the bread, eaten 
in our Saviour's memory, became his very broken body by 
a supernatural change. The Lord's Supper, however, is 
not to be confounded with the love feasts which the early 
Christians held. It was never properly a feast, and its 
elements were very simple. It became a rite from the 
same necessity that drove the Church from the upper room 
in the house to a special sacred place. But for three cen- 
turies it continued to be a memorial, but not a supersti- 
tious rite. And its observance was left quite free, and 
hedged about by none of those artificial rules that confine 
it in modern times. It was a rite of the utmost import- 
ance, and was sent to the sick and those in prison, adminis- 
tered sometimes too even to infants. All the old writers 
are full in its injunction, and I might multiply quotations to 
show what estimate they put upon it. Every devout be- 
liever felt it to be the height of his religious joy, when 
from the hand of his bishop he could receive the sacred 
elements. The method of administration however even 
at the time of Constantine, was more like our Congrega- 
8 



H4 SYMBOLISM. 



tional than that which is the Episcopal or Catholic method. 
The deacons aided the bishop in the distribution of the ele- 
ments. Our own form of administration differs only 
slightly from the form in the Church of Constantine. 

We have followed the worship of the Church through 
the first period of history. A summary of the progress 
can best be given by a simple sketch of a religious service 
in the days of Constantine. Let the day be Easter Sun- 
day, and the place Athens, where Paul had become a hero 
greater than Plato or Pericles. Early in the morning, the 
Christians are astir, and before the sun has risen, are set 
forth on their way over the rocky hills, and through the 
narrow streets to the house of their solemnities. The 
fresh, clear air of a spring morning, the smell of flowers 
and the song of birds seem to lend impulse to their devo- 
tions. All around the wild and lovely ruins tell of God's 
doings in the past, and how the Pagan gods have fallen. 
They pass by Mars Hill, and think there of the time when 
an Apostle summoned a multitude to leave their idols and 
worship the true Jehovah. Some cross the place where 
Socrates once walked with his followers, and spoke such 
profound and mystical words, and think then that they 
are blest in hearing a higher wisdom, and beholding in 
the risen Jesus a holier mystery. Some come from the 
outskirt villages, where they see the plains of Marathon 
on their way, and can think of a more glorious victory than 
that in the Cross of Christ. The desolation and ruin 
around them only exalt the great salvation. But they 
converge from every side to a plain, lowly, and dull-col- 
ored building in one of the. narrower streets. The build- 
ing fronts towards the East, where stands the Jerusalem of 
their hope. They enter not through the front, but from a 
court-yard in the rear, — for they must face the East in the 
worship as well as their sanctuary. As they enter, the 
sound of loud singing greets them. They are chanting 
the " Glory be to God on high," and in the song are heard 
the mingled voices of childhood and age, of men and 
maidens, — making sweet melody with their hearts to- 
gether, if their music be not quite perfect. The company, 
decently, but not gaudily, clad, are standing around the 
railing of the altar. Within is seen the Table of the 



SYMBOLISM. 115 



Lord, adorned with the sacred vessels, and on the wall 
above it hangs the Cross, emblem of a dying Saviour. On 
a raised seat at the side sits the bishop, and one or two 
priests and deacons wait around him. You will see nothing 
else around the walls to attract you, no painting or archi- 
tectural ornament, only the plain, simple cemented stone. 
Presently, as the chant ceases, one of the priests passes to 
the little desk beside the table and opens the Bible, which 
is laid thereon. And then in a sad, low tone, he reads 
that wail of the Prophet Isaiah, where he foretells the 
humiliation and the agony of the Redeemer. There is 
the hush of anguish among the silent worshippers. Then 
he turns to the twentieth chapter of John's Gospel, and the 
expression of joy and triumph passes upon their faces as 
he reads how Christ rose from the dead. He ends, and 
another rises to dictate before the throng St. Clement's 
great hymn of "Christ the Saviour," — and the voices 
linger sweetly on the refrain " aiveip uyiwg, vuretv (tdolwg, 
uxuxoig arofiuaLv, tiuiSmp rflrjTOQu Xqutioi" This done, 
a short portion of Scripture is read by the bishop. 
It is the first verses of John's record, " In the beginning 
was the word, and the word was with God, and the word 
was God." And then, having lifted a fervent prayer, in 
simple phrase he expounds the secret mystery of this pas- 
sage. 

He shows them the great plan of redemption concealed 
in this union of God with a human soul, — how the logos 
is no attribute, but a real person, in wonderful guise the 
word was made flesh. And as he exalts the bounty of that 
celestial love, that did so incarnate the Divine word, and 
provide for man's salvation, what rapture kindles on his 
countenance. Flow the dignity of his theme seems to 
raise him almost to the place of a divine interpreter. And 
then there is seen a frown darkening his face as he speaks 
of the impious heresies with which evil men are infecting 
the Church, robbing Christ of his dignity, and making the 
salvation of Christ only part of a heathen order. He 
compares too the darkness of the old philosophies, which 
never exhibited one risen from the dead, with the clear 
beauty of the Christian promise. And before he closes, 
you have seen the sacred oracles of the holy volume pass 



n6 SYMBOLISM. 



into precepts of virtue and promises of joy. Insensibly 
his word of interpretation melts into prayer, and he is 
leading the hearts of the multitude to the throne of Grace. 
And now they chant in soft and plaintive tone the Psalm 
that Christ, in his anguish, remembered, "Eli, Eli, lama 
sabacthani." 

Then, for a little while, all pause in silent prayer, until 
one of the priests shall supplicate God's kind care for all 
conditions of men. Then come forward in turn the 
brethren with their offerings, all have something to give, — 
the wealthy gold for the needs of the sanctuary, and bread 
and wine for the holy office, — the widow her mite. The 
elements are placed upon the table and covered with the 
napkin. Then, after the priests have washed their hands 
before the people, to fulfill the word of the Psalmist, and 
the kiss of peace has passed from them through the com- 
pany, each saluting his neighbors, commences the service 
of communion. 

Those who were baptised yesterday in the classic brook, 
now pledge at the altar their allegiance to God, and devo- 
tion to his truth. They seemed, dressed in robes of white 
before the altar, to be the best votive offering that the 
Church can give on their day of rejoicing. Now the 
people are earnestly exhorted to be true to their vows. 
The entreaties of St. Paul to the Romans are rehearsed 
again, and, as they come forward to the altar, all join in 
that beautiful Psalm, " Behold how good and pleasant it is 
for brethren to dwell together in unity." Then by repeat- 
ing the words of Christ as he broke the bread and wine, 
and asking a simple blessing, they are consecrated to their 
use, and are handed round to the brethren by the ministers 
present, saying, as they go, " The body of Christ, the blood 
of Christ." 

Silently the feast goes on, broken sometimes by sobs of 
grief, sometimes by half-restrained sighs. But when it 
is over, they break into a thanksgiving, — the friends of 
those who are sick or absent take charge of the portion 
that is for these, the benediction, " Go in peace," is uttered 
and the service is over. How simple and beautiful. As 
the rest depart, one or two linger behind, perhaps to tell 
some tidings of recent religious persecution, — perhaps to 



SYMBOLISM. 117 



meditate upon the deep truths that have passed, as in a 
vision, before them. But all have separated to their 
homes, before the mid-hour of Pagan labor has come. 
Some will return when the day is declining to talk and sing 
anew in their tabernacle of faith. But no curious heathen 
eye could discover when the meridian sun sends light 
through the narrow streets, that here was anything else than 
a house of the meaner sort. No sign around would tell 
him of the beautiful service that had passed therein since 
the break of day, and had given to Athens a more 
sacred glory than the morning walks of Plato, or the ap- 
peals of Demosthenes. 

This sketch will serve to show the position of worship 
in the Church at the close of the third century. The 
establishment of Christianity as the religion of the empire 
by Constantine brought about a striking change in all 
parts of the Christian ritual. And the great work which 
Gregory did, at the close of the second period, was only 
to prepare the elements formed to his hands. Perhaps 
the most sudden and thorough change was in the kind and 
appearance of the buildings for public worship. Now the 
meeting-houses became temples. They were placed on 
the most eligible sites, sometimes on the ruins of Pagan 
temples, — sometimes the very Pagan temples with their 
name and their god transformed. Emperors vied with 
each other in the numbers and costliness of their churches. 
They were set upon the hills, and their broad porches and 
elaborate columns rivalled the relics of Pagan art in 
majesty and beauty. 

Now the altar within became a kind of throne for Jeho- 
vah, and its marble was inlaid with jewels and gold, 
and candlesticks blazed upon it. By the solemn rite of 
dedication, the church was set apart as a sacred place, and 
became to the brethren a holy of holies. About the mid- 
dle of the sixth century, about the same distance from 
Constantine's time that we are from the landing of the 
Pilgrims, the Emperor Justinian commenced building at 
Constantinople the magnificent Church of St. Sophia, 
where stands now the holiest of Moslem mosques, — which 
he considered to be the greatest work of his life, greater even 
than the code of laws which he gave to the world. His 



n8 SYMBOLISM. 



proud expression, when the work of forty years was done, 
was, "I have conquered thee, Solomon." 

It was one hundred and eighty feet in height, and cost 
$5,000,000. Forty thousand pounds of silver were used in 
decorating the altar, and its retinue of special ministers 
and attendants was five hundred and twenty-five. The 
Gothic style, with its pointed arch and rich interlacing 
tracery, began now to encroach upon the plainer Grecian. 
And churches began to point their tapering spires to the 
sky. The cross became the form which the building took, 
and the divisions of the altar, the nave and the portico 
were more distinctly marked off. Great libraries were 
attached to the churches, — that of St. Sophia contained 
one hundred and twenty thousand volumes. The worship- 
per, in a church of the sixth century trod upon a beautiful 
floor of tessellated marble, inlaid with the finest mosaics. 
On the walls were paintings of Scriptural scenes and 
sculptured heads of the old Apostles. The shields of 
heroes and the spoils of war were hung up in the temple 
for ornament. And from these the lights hung down. 
The sanctuary became a place of refuge, and, as in the 
old Roman temples, the worst criminal was safe so long as 
he stayed by the altar. In less than three centuries, from 
obscure and plain tabernacles, the houses of Christian 
worship had become gorgeous cathedrals, — - and the 
Church of St. Peter and St. Paul at Rome was a more 
attractive object of pilgrimage than even the temple of 
Olympian Jupiter. 

Now too feast-days began rapidly to multiply. The 
degraded people had little else to do than to spend time 
in sport or rioting, and this tendency showed itself among 
the Christians in the new festivals to which every year gave 
rise. Christmas came in, a conjectural day at first, but 
fixed at last by custom on the day of its present use. 
Then Mary, the mother of God, as she received divine 
honors, had a day set apart for her service. The martyrs 
had their share. And the epigram of a reformer upon 
Rome in this latter age, that the Saints' days left no room 
for any secular time, was almost true when Gregory as- 
sumed the helm of the Church. The regular fasts now 
were appointed on Wednesday, the day of our Saviour's 



SYMBOLISM. 119 



betrayal, and on Friday, the day of his crucifixion. On 
these no meat should be eaten, and only the simplest kind 
of food was enjoined. Some even taught that the forty 
days before the feast of Easter, which is now called Lent, 
should be spent in fasting. 

Now too the reading of the Scriptures, which had 
before been untrammeled by severe rules, became a sys- 
tematic and formal matter. They were parcelled off into 
separate lessons, which were rehearsed in a sort of monoto- 
nous chant. No special events were allowed to guide 
it. The cumbrous ceremonies of the Levitical Law were 
read thus to the people as if they were important truths, 
and the thundering of invading armies could not unsettle 
the prescribed routine. Now sermons too passed from 
the expository into the declamatory style. Preachers 
studied the rules of rhetoric, and borrowed the arts of the 
popular orator. They directed appeals to the prejudices 
and passions of men, and flattered while they warned 
their hearers. In the cathedral churches the bishops were 
the orators of the world. Men crowded to hear Chrysos- 
tom and Ambrose as they would to the play or circus. 
Applause waited upon their words. And even their most 
terrible warnings captivated by their beauty. The sermon 
became an entertainment as well as a searching exposition 
of Scripture. And men expected to hear the truth of 
Christ softened by the periods of ^Eschines or Tully, and 
mingled with the wit and wisdom of the classic sages. 

In the fourth century the service of prayer, which had 
before been a spontaneous outpouring of the heart to God, 
was drawn out into liturgies. And forms were given to be 
used everywhere through the Church. The new splendor 
of the sacred Courts seemed to demand such a ritual. 
Indeed it is observable everywhere that increased magni- 
nificence in church building brings in more formality of 
service. There is a kind of consistency about it. And it 
is easy to feel, as many do, that Congregational worship is 
out of place in a highly decorated temple. And the 
prayers that were very natural in the gatherings of the 
caves by night became presumptuous in the great cathedral 
halls. 

At the time of Gregory there were four distinct liturgies 



120 SYMBOLISM. 



fixed in the Church, each of them old enough to have a 
history. To each was the name of some Apostle appended, 
without any authority however. The liturgy of Antioch 
bore the name of James, the Alexandrian of Mark, the 
Roman of Peter, and the Gallican of John. At the time 
of Gregory these had reached that point where they were 
just ready to be changed into the mass. The hymns and 
the prayers were chanted together, and a Pagan hearer 
could hardly tell which was the penitence and which the 
praise. It was a fatal progress for spiritual religion. 
Beautiful as were the offices that were thus established in 
the Christian ritual, their final tendency was to check fer- 
vor of devotion, and reduce the service of the sanctuary to 
a mechanical routine. Men became weary of the words 
of Basil and Ambrose when they heard them every day. 
And though Attila could look with barbaric wonder upon 
the splendid pageant of a Christian ceremony, he could 
not say, with the great man of an earlier age, " See how 
these Christians love one another." 

The union of words so strongly cemented, by which the 
prayers of one were the prayers of all, was no true type of 
a spiritual union, — of heart joined to heart. There were 
never more private interests, more jealousies, more usurpa- 
tions of individual churches, more practical egotism, than 
when the whole Latin Church was in possession of a com- 
mon form of pra3^er and praise. The true interchange of 
gifts and graces, true charity, forbearance, and kindness 
were far more conspicuous in that early time, when each 
one spake and sang as he felt, moved by the spirit. It 
will be so forever. You cannot bind the hearts of men 
together by giving them a common form of words, or even 
a commop written creed. These will create no doubt an 
appearance of mutual love, but the appearance will be as 
much a form as the words used. There are many excel- 
lencies no doubt in written forms of prayer. 

I never worship in an Episcopal or a Catholic Church 
without feeling the exceeding beauty of their devotional 
service. Those prayers are marvels of dignity, compre- 
hensiveness, and simple fervor, — worthy of their high 
theme, yet such as a child could utter. But I do not 
believe that the claim set up for these written forms, that 



SYMBOLISM. 121 



they increase the essential love of Christian brethren for 
each other, is true. They become no doubt the centre 
of many religious courtesies, — but the love of the heart 
is not easily promoted by that which enchains the tongue. 
It lies deeper than the surface. It comes from having 
religious ideas and feelings in common, no matter in what 
phrase the words of prayer may be. It is the conference 
room where everything is free, that brethren are drawn 
most closely together. This is a universal experience. 

The heathen art of music now found a place in the oc- 
cupations of the faithful. And the singing, which had 
before been more spirited than melodious, began to be 
drawn out in harmonious numbers. Trained choirs per- 
formed this work for the people, and their enraptured ears 
listened to the rising and falling cadences as they echoed 
through the aisles and arches. Now hymns were written 
for music and for religious occasions. There was music 
at the bridal and at the funeral ; and the best Christian 
poets tried their powers in writing birth-day odes, and 
requiems for the dead. A beautiful specimen of this is 
a funeral hymn of Prudentius, a Christian poet of the 
third century : 

1. — Why, ye mothers, why this sadness? 

Why do tears your cheeks bedew ? 
Why should death disturb your gladness ? 
Death doth truest life renew. 

2. — Dark and cold the vacant hollow, 

Still the bier beneath the stone, 
Yet no night the death shall follow, 
Morning glows where he has gone. 

3. — Leave the corpse ! An useless covering, 

Peaceful in the grave to lie, 
Soon the Spirit lightly moving, 
Holier dress shall weave on high. 

4. — Time shall come of strange reviving, 

Breath these mouldering bones shall warm, 
To a nobler being striving, 

They shall bear a brighter form. 

5. — What ye now consign to burial, 

Food for worms, beneath the sod, 
Soon, like eagles, through the Empyreal, 
Glad shall speed its way to God. 



SYMBOLISM. 



6. — As from a dry and rattling kernel 

Dropped into the lap of earth, 
Joyfully in beauty vernal, 

Nodding grain-ears burst to birth. 

7. — Earth ! This form to thy embraces, 

Take and fold it safe to rest ; 
Dead, yet lingering still the traces 
Of the love that warmed its breast. 

8. — Once a soul, by God inspired, 

Here as in a temple dwelt; 
Now to Christian ardor fired, 
Now in pity's tears would melt. 

9. — Leave the body then to slumber, 

Let it wait that trumpet-call, 
When the Judge the dead shall number, 
Gathering in his Sentence-hall, 

10. — Then, O Death, thy reign is ended, 
New life .fills the crumbling clay, 
Mortal dust with angel blended, 
Keep in heaven eternal day. 

In this period the ordinances of the Church gradually 
changed from simple symbolical acts to most imposing and 
momentous ceremonies. The Lord's Supper became a 
mass, and the brethren knelt when the host was lifted, and 
veiled their faces before its awful mystery. The doctrine 
of Transubstantiation having become part of the general 
creed, — men eat the transmuted bread with fear and 
trembling, as if partaking of Christ's holy flesh, — and the 
red wine gained to their taste the savor of the new blood 
of suffering. Baptism too passed from the sign of future 
purity into a pledge of divine favor, and the child with 
sprinkled forehead seemed chosen henceforth an heir of 
the kingdom, and armed, like Achilles, with panoply 
divine. 

Now other sacraments were added. Marriage, from a 
contract, became a rite, and its religious outweighed its 
secular obligations. The dying man received the oil upon 
his forehead as the final seal by God of his reception on 
high. A newly- discovered Purgatory made necessary 
many gifts from the brethren of the Church to rescue 
souls from that doubtful state. And prayers for the dead 
made an important portion of the worship of the living. 



SYMBOLISM. 



One could hardly discover in the multitude of feasts and 
fasts, of sacraments and chants, of vestments and of 
images, any vestige of the worship of that little band, who, 
in an upper room at Jerusalem, bewailed their Master's 
death, and, by prayer and counsel, found strength for their 
great missionary enterprise. 

But we may concentrate the changes that took place in 
worship in the course of three centuries, as before, in a pic- 
ture of a religious service of the time of Gregory the Great. 
The place shall be at Rome, for Rome is now the home 
of universal spiritual dominion, and her bishop can look 
round on every side as a Christian emperor upon his sub- 
jects. The time shall be the martyrdom-day of St. Peter, 
for this has come to share the reverence of the world with 
the birth-day of Christ. On the 29th of June, when the 
hot sun of a Southern summer is pouring down its rays 
upon the shining pavement, a gay crowd, in many colors 
and from many climes, are seen thronging to the great 
church of the prince of the Apostles. As they enter, their 
eyes are greeted by a raised altar, blazing in the distance 
with light and gold, and the soft music of answering choirs, 
from either side, bids them welcome to the solemn mass. 
On every side, from floor to ceiling, marble images, or 
strange scriptural scenes, painted on wood, tell them that 
this is a holy place. They tread gently for fear of soiling 
the fine mosaic beneath their feet. Behind the chancel 
railing sits in his chair of state, the most serene Vicar of 
God. Before him, kneeling, two priests hold the Latin 
mass-book, on painted parchment, and from that he chants 
the prayers to which the choirs respond. No word is heard 
from the people, but only suspended breathing makes the 
silence audible. Now a priest in purple garments mounts 
the raised pulpit, and then, without Scriptural preface, 
breaks into a florid harangue. It is eulogy of the Church 
and of the Blessed Apostle that forms the burden of his 
message. 

He tells how Peter was crucified with his head down- 
ward, — what miracles God has wrought with his sacred 
bones, and holds up before them a fragment of that mantle 
which wiped his tears away when his Master rebuked him. 
He tells them of the blessings then that shall come to the 



124 SYMBOLISM. 



true believer, and paints in luxurious colors the Christian 
Paradise. But, Oh ! there are wailing spirits that fly be- 
tween heaven and hell, — will not the faithful rescue them 
by liberal gifts and earnest prayers ? Will they not give of 
their substance to save these souls from final woe ? And 
more like this, till another follows, who in melting tones 
describes so mournfully the sufferings of the martyr, that 
the whole multitude are dissolved in sentimental grief, and 
can hardly behold the ceremony which succeeds, when a 
hundred priests in turn distribute to each other the kiss, 
and receive from the Bishop a fatherly benediction. 

And now the high service begins. The anthem sounds 
from the choir. New candles suddenly burst into flame 
upon the altar. And in their glow are seen the forms of 
the dying Peter and the praying Virgin on either side of 
Christ upon his Cross. With stately step, the bishop 
advances with his retinue behind him. The audience 
tremble with sudden awe as they hear the magical words 
that restore again the agony and open the wounds of 
Jesus the Crucified. Every head is bowed. Slowly and 
reverently, as in the sight of God alone, the bishop eats 
the wafer and drinks the wine. The vault of the church 
is full of the sound of low wailing voices, and a superna- 
tural darkness seems to be on every form. There is a 
fearful pause, and it is finished. A hallelujah rings out 
and the arches are vocal now as with angel voices of 
praise. 

The great service of the Christian feast-day is over, and 
that crowd gathered so seriously in the morning, the even- 
ing shall find crowding the theatre or the chariot-race. 
The pageant of the morning has furnished an excuse 
for the dissipation of the evening. This is a picture, 
faintly-colored, of the Catholic religious service, such as it 
was when Gregory took the helm of spiritual power. He 
gave order to this custom, and finally established it as the 
Christian ritual. 



GBEGOEY THE GEE AT. 125 



IV. 

GREGORY THE GREAT AND HIS INFLUENCE. 

" He who will speak with power in the name of the 
Most High, must manifest in his life the law of the Most 
High." This sentence from the great work of Gregory on 
the Christian Pastor and his work is the general formula of 
his own life. The Christian teacher must be himself a 
Christian before he can teach, and he will teach just so 
far and only so far, as he is a Christian. The formula has 
been proved by memorable examples in Christian history, 
and the life of every successful minister of God bears wit- 
ness to it. 

Characters of more striking interest than that of the 
Great Gregory have passed before us in the great doctors 
of the Latin Church, but we find in him an assemblage of 
contrasts not elsewhere met with. So much that is puerile 
joined to so much that is lovely, such narrow bigotry united 
to such wide charity, such practical, added to such ideal, 
tastes, rarely make their appearance in the annals of the 
Church. In one view, the creature of circumstances, 
the man of the age, because moulded by the age ; in 
another view, the creator of events, the man of the age, 
because the maker of its issues ; at once a Pope and an 
Apostle ; a fanatic and a saint ; austere in bearing, but 
humble in spirit ; the legislator of pomp and show, yet a 
lover always of simple fitness; a merchant-prince for the 
Church, filling its coffers, and watchful of its revenues, 
yet a very anchorite in self-denial and frugality; frank in 
demeanor, but shrewd in policy, he stands in the record 
in strange isolation, yet we feel him to be our brother 
after all. 

The name of Gregory is as much connected with the 
establishment of the Catholic ritual, as that of Leo with 
the establishment of the Catholic power. But there is far 



126 GREGORY THE GREAT. 

more individuality in the life of the former. Leo is the 
representative merely of an idea. He has no personal 
biography. He is only the first of the Popes, great in 
position, but nothing by himself. Gregory, on the con- 
trary, if he had never done anything for music, for poetry, 
or for worship, would still have been a marked man, and 
worthy of the title, which his own age gave him, and which 
no succeeding age has annulled, of " the Great." He 
was not merely the former of choirs or the framer of litur- 
gies, but a man, with human sympathies, a minister most 
devoted and faithful, a prelate, able and vigorous, a 
sovereign powerful and commanding. He was a man to 
be loved, admired or feared, according as one looked upon 
his purity, his talents, or his strength. Even the infidel 
historian of the secular decline of Rome and its dominion, 
pauses to speak of the Great Ruler of the Church, who 
showed in an age of decline so rare a union of gifts and 
graces. 

Gregory was born in Rome about the year 540 of our 
era. His parents were of noble lineage and high in dis- 
tinction. But either so high ran their religious zeal, or so 
low had fallen the standard of profane scholarship, that 
even the child of noble birth was not suffered to study in 
the heathen poets or philosophers. In the dreamy round 
of pious pleasures passed away the first years of his life, 
and he hardly knew how the civil dignity had been put 
upon him, when he found himself at the age of thirty pre- 
fect of Rome, his father dead and his mother in a clois- 
ter. It was not till this mature age that he began to be 
troubled by the conflict within his heart between the carnal 
and the spiritual, between his duty to the world, and his 
desire to see God, between ambition and aspiration. Bur- 
dened with the cares of life, he felt then the necessity of 
spiritual rest. And the conflict ended then by the victory 
of the spiritual desire over the temporal interest. 

At the age of forty, tne patrician child had sacrificed 
wealth, rank, honor, and power to his pious resolve. Six 
convents in Sicily had sprung into being on his endowment, 
and what remained of his wealth was devoted to a Bene- 
dictine monastery in his own house, into which he entered 
as the most rigid of the monks there. Long fasts macer- 



GREGORY THE GREAT. 127 

ated his body; and he aimed, by double penances, to 
expiate not so much the sins as the enjoyments of his 
youth. This period of cloister life, though short in dura- 
tion, Gregory was accustomed to regard as the oasis in 
the desert of his career, and "to say that he was never so 
happy as when deprived of every pleasure, and doubtful 
whether each day should not be his last. But a genius 
like his could not be left to waste itself in mumbling 
litanies within convent-walls. 

The magnitude of his gifts to the Church marked him 
as meet for the work of the Church. The Pope com- 
manded him to go as Legate to the Emperor's Court at 
Constantinople. The heart of Gregory relucted, but he had 
learned obedience too well to refuse. He regarded it as a 
salvation that his train of brother monks could follow him 
there, and keep in his mind his religious duties, even in 
that luxurious and intriguing Court. Dignities did not 
corrupt him. The honor of standing godfather to the 
emperor's son at baptism did not seduce him from his 
unworldly love. But he gave rather heed to purity of 
faith, and sanctity of life, rebuking when he found any to 
be unsound, and praying for the conversion of all heathen, 
both of Christian and Pagan name. He remained at 
Constantinople seven years, when, to his great joy, his 
recall was ordered, and he was permitted to become in 
quiet the Abbot of the monastery which he had founded. 
The order and firmness and patience of his administration 
here seemed to mark his fitness for higher dignities. 

It was about this time that he first conceived the plan of 
sending a mission to the distant isle of Britain, where then 
a race of beautiful savages, called Anglo-Saxons, dwelt. 
The impulse took its rise from the following incident: 
Rome at this period was to the Empire not only a seat of 
civil power, but a great central slave-market. One day, 
when Gregory was walking through the mart, he was 
struck by the beautiful countenances and complexion of a 
group that were exposed for sale, and he stopped to inquire 
whether they were Christians or heathens. On hearing 
that they were heathen, he answered with a sigh, that 
it was a lamentable thing that the prince of darkness 
should be master of so much beauty, and have such comely 



128 GREGORY THE GREAT. 



persons in his possession ; and that so fine an outside 
should have nothing of God's grace to furnish it within. 
The venerable Bede adds, in his narrative, some poor puns 
made by the holy Abbot, which, however, the vanity of 
a Saxon may well be pardoned for repeating. When told 
that the slaves were Angli, Gregory answered, " Right, 
for they have angelical faces, and are fit to be company to 
the angels in heaven." Asking the name of their province, 
he was answered that it was called " Deira." '' Truly," 
said he, " They are withdrawn from God's wrath in coming 
here. And the king of that province, how is he named ? " 
" Alle!" "Allelujah," said Gregory, "shall then be sung 
in those regions." 

He applied at once to send a mission to Britain. And 
finding no one willing to lead it, he set out himself with a 
company of his own monks. But the city was in such an 
uproar at his departure, that the Pope sent after him 
speedily, and on the third day he was overtaken and com- 
pelled to return to Rome. He was afterwards enabled to 
fulfill his desire on a broader scale. 

Some signal acts of discipline in his convent, began to 
mark him already as a fit person for the Papal office, when 
a vacancy should occur. The case of Justus is related 
with needless minuteness. This monk confessed, on his 
death bed, that in violation of his poverty he had obtained 
and kept three pieces of gold. Gregory not only forbade 
the community to pray at his bedside, but had the discipline 
strictly observed, the corpse buried under a dunghill, and 
the three pieces of money thrown into it; and all this, 
though the man died penitent. The most that he allowed 
was a mass for his soul of thirty days. 

Gregory had just completed his fiftieth year when the 
acclamation of bishops and people called him to the 
Pontifical chair. He had no mind to accept the duty. 
And by letters to the emperor and his sisters, and the 
bishop of Constantinople, he sought to prevail on them 
that the choice should be annulled. But his hesitation and 
self-distrust were, in their eyes, only an evidence of his 
fitness, and the choice was confirmed by the civil authority. 
The stratagem of procuring some friendly merchant to 
carry him out of the city in a basket was less fortunate 



GBEGOEY THE GREAT. 129 

than in the case of Saul of Tarsus, and he was discovered, 
brought back again, and, on the third of September, con- 
secrated solemnly to the office of the Holy See. 

The duty which he had taken up most unwillingly he 
fulfilled most faithfully. And he gave to the clergy and 
the world his idea of duty in a great work upon the Pas- 
toral Office. This admirable work, of which the analysis 
even would occupy a lecture, divided as it was into four 
parts, each containing almost a separate treatise, remained 
for ages a classic and a manual for pastors in the Church. 
It was translated into Greek, and King Alfred loved it so 
well that he had rendered it into the Anglo-Saxon. This 
treatise abounds with wise sayings, which have passed into 
maxims and are settled truths. It anticipates the wisdom 
of subsequent experience, and its counsels are as useful for 
an American clergyman of the nineteenth century as they 
were for a bishop of ancient Rome. The youthful pastor 
still needs to be admonished that the souls of his people 
are more to be cared for than their approval, and that their 
final salvation is of more consequence than their present 
applause. 

For thirteen years Gregory exercised the power of a 
Roman prelate. And all historians agree that these thir- 
teen years were the most brilliant of Church history since 
the days of the Apostles. They saw the dominion of the 
Church broadly extended, its order confirmed, its doc- 
trine revised, its discipline systematized, its worship 
rounded off and made to rival the most splendid cere- 
monies of heathen antiquity. To enumerate the various 
acts that Gregory did for the good of the State and the 
Church would be fatiguing. We need only behold his in- 
fluence in the several more important spheres of action. 
For his influence in these really represents to us what were 
the average opinions of the Christian world at the end' of 
the sixth century, when a new religion broke upon the 
world, and Mohammed appeared as the prophet of God. 

And first, we will look upon his doctrinal position. He 
was a strong believer in the double sense of the Scriptures. 
He held that there was an inner and an outer meaning, 
a spirit and a letter, standing towards each other as the 
porch to the door. The multitude are permitted to stand 
9 



13° GREGORY THE GREAT. 

in the outer court and to read the words of the Bible, 
to learn its facts and histories, but the wise and holy, 
by means of allegory, can penetrate its sacred recesses. 
It is thus that one is able to find the great central truths 
of the oneness of Christ with God and his trinity of per- 
sons revealed in the Holy Scriptures. Gregory is very 
honest in confessing that this mystical doctrine comes 
out of the allegorical and not of the literal sense of the 
Scriptures; — an honesty which the Oxford divines of the 
present day are entitled to share. 

The general theology of Gregory is that which Augus- 
tine taught two centuries earlier. But his theory of the 
human will is different. Gregory was what is called a 
Semi-Pelagian, — i. e., one who ascribes the conversion of 
men to an equal and contemporaneous action of the will 
of man and the grace of God. He was too devout to 
attribute all the work, like Pelagius, to the first agency, 
and too practical to attribute it all, like Augustine, 
to the last. The principal addition that he made to the 
sum of Christian doctrine, was in the discovery of Purga- 
tory. What the earlier fathers had only dreamed about, 
Gregory actually defined. And though he did not say 
whereabouts in space the singular region was to be found, 
he located it exactly in regard to the time of each man's 
life. It was a time between earih and heaven, and a 
region wherein disembodied souls should walk until they 
were prayed into Paradise by the faithful. 

There was much shrewdness in the discovery, and it 
tended signally to enlarge the revenues of the Church. 
But Gregory was one of those singularly constituted minds 
which believe in their own impositions. And there is no 
doubt, though he admitted purgatory to be a profitable 
place, a sort of Christian El Dorado, from which gold 
came into the Church, though those who went there could 
not get back again, he really believed in it as a fact. 
Indeed he defines with some minuteness the kinds of 
crimes which are punished there. Unpardonable sinners 
he consigns to hell at once, there is no hope of them. All 
the prayers of all the faithful cannot get an obstinate 
heretic out of hell, for he has blasphemed the Holy 
Ghost. But the sins which merely condemn one to purga- 



GREGORY THE GREAT. 13 1 

tory are idle words, immoderate laughter, mistakes and 
blunders of all kinds, and worldliness in general, any- 
thing, in fact, which does not indicate positive depravity 
of heart, but only depravity of habit. There is a good 
deal of sound philosophy in this classification. For do we 
not all feel, and are we not warranted, too, by Scripture, 
in asserting, that there is hope when the temptations of 
earth are removed, that habits here contracted will tyrannize 
no longer, that so much sin as is external, and not of the 
heart may be escaped from ? The soundest reason does 
indicate to us a kind of purgatorial state, in which the 
soul, pure in its essence and intention, shall cleanse itself 
from the stains contracted in its earthly sojourn. But for 
the recovery of one whose soul is desperately wicked no 
purgatory seems to be so pertinent. We should probably 
differ from Gregory in not assigning to obstinate heresy so 
conspicuous a place in hell. 

Immediately connected with the new doctrine of Purga- 
tory, which Gregory introduced, was that prayer for the 
dead, which was both a doctrine and a ceremony. He 
could see no reason why prayers for the salvation of the 
souls in limbo were not as proper as prayers for the wel- 
fare of men during their earthly probation. In either case, 
it was a supplication that God would carry them safely 
through the trial. But he saw even a superior necessity in 
case of the dead. For prayers were the only kind of aid 
that these could receive. The living might be helped by 
counsels and gifts. But no other than an earnest supplica- 
tion could be brought to aid the dead. He makes a distinc- 
tion however between the different classes of the dead; 
and tells them that it is of no use to pray either for very 
desperate or for very excellent departed spirits. For the 
former cannot be benefitted by such prayers, and the latter 
do not need them. He arranged masses for the dead 
accurately in regard to time and method. Some souls 
require more and some less; but the average number 
of daily services required to. get a soul out of Purgatory is 
about thirty. And this has become the standard of the 
Catholic Church in its prayers for the dead. When any- 
body dies now, in that Church, his friends and relatives are 
expected to say mass for him, — or to hire it said, — for 



132 GREGORY THE GREAT. 

the space of thirty days. It is a cheap way for some 
hardened sinner to get into Paradise to engage accommo- 
dating priests thus to pray him in ; and many are the 
ample legacies which have been left for this end. This 
discovery of Gregory has proved, in a pecuniary sense, 
more profitable than any gold mine could have been to the 
Church. 

Another most prominent article in Gregory's faith was 
to believe in miracles, relics and amulets. No story was 
so marvellous that he would not take it in, no tradition, 
legend, or relic so uncertain, that it did not become holy 
to him. He had a particular love for any memorial of the 
Apostle Peter, his great predecessor. And he esteemed 
himself highly blessed in possessing the key of St. Peter's 
tomb. He was always sending this round when any signal 
cures were wished for, and occasionally would accompany 
it with a few filings from St. Peter's fetters. When the 
Empress Constantina sent to him the modest request for 
the head or a portion of the body of St. Peter for the 
consecration of a new church which she had built, he 
replied, that such a gift was out of his power, and then 
relates to her what awful prodigies had occurred when 
they attempted to take the silver plate from the bones of 
the saint. 

Gregory's was one of those minds that take naturally 
hold of every form of superstition. And yet he was not a 
dogmatist nor a merciless persecutor. Though Orthodox 
enough so far as soundness of faith was concerned, he had 
not the spirit of a bigot. His course in regard to the 
Jews, for instance, was very much in contrast with the 
course pursued by his successors, and by some, too, who 
went before him. He allowed no plunder, no outrage, no 
exclusion even from business or social transactions, of this 
unfortunate people. They were permitted by him to keep 
their synagogues and their worship, to have the rights of 
citizens, their oaths were received, and all offences of 
the Christians towards them were punished as much as 
offences against fellow-Christians. Equally just and toler- 
ant were his rules with regard to heathens and heretics. 
And yet, though tolerant towards them, Gregory had a 
naming zeal for the conversion of all these classes of 
unbelievers. 



GREGORY THE GREAT. 133 

If he thought there was any hope of this, he would over- 
look some questionable methods taken to bring it about. 
In pious transactions, like some modern religionists, he 
believed that the end sanctified the means ; and though 
he would not allow obstinate unbelievers to be maltreated, 
he would condescend to bribe or to threaten into the true 
faith those who showed signs of wavering. He thought 
that it was a laudable way of spending the Church reven- 
ues, to convert lost souls to the Catholic creed. And if 
he could not get the fathers, he would take the children. 
Many youthful Jews and heathen, tempted thus by the 
prospect of an early independence, forsook the great 
Jehovah and the gods of the temple, for the Triune Head 
of the Christian faith. Gregory, with all his superstition, 
understood human nature on its weaker side. 

Let us look now at the ecclesiastical position of Greg- 
ory in regard to the government of the Church. Gregory 
was less of a Pope than Leo, but more of a priest. He 
was less strenuous about the power of his Papal seat than 
for its comfort and order. He loved to talk about the 
Church and to tell its blessing, but was not so jealous to 
contend for it. He was proud of its unity, and yet de- 
lighted to recognize this unity as a regular building with 
four side-walls, as he called the four great patriarchates. 
He disclaimed for himself all titles of authority or honor, 
and did not like to have him obey his orders, but rather 
yield to his suggestion. He writes to the Patriarch of 
Alexandria : " In rank you are my brother, in virtues 
my father. Why then do you say that I command you 
and address me as the universal Pope. I do not find my 
honor in allowing my brethren to relinquish theirs. My 
honor is that of the whole Church. And when any one 
receives his fitting dignity, then am I truly honored. 
When you call me the universal Pope, you separate my 
dignity from the rest, and prevent me from being universal. 
Away with these empty words, which nourish vanity, and 
outrage love." Instead of Pope, he would have them call 
him, " Servant of Servants." 

Yet Gregory was not willing to make compromise of the 
rights of his place. He felt himself to be by this the first 
among equals. His was the front wall of the building, 



134 GBEGORT THE GREAT. 

and he never consented to any assumptions from the other 
quarters. He held to the regular pyramid of order which 
Leo had finally fixed, and was as truly a defender of 
Peter's supremacy as any Pope. He differed from Leo in 
the breadth of his view. Leo's doctrine was that anything 
that the Pope commanded must be obeyed, because he 
was the head of the Church, and had its authority. Greg- 
ory, on the contrary, thought that the Church was the 
infallible arbiter, and the Pope only through the Church. 
Leo believed that the Pope might dictate to Councils. 
Gregory held that Councils should dictate to the Pope. 
So too in regard to the State. He would keep the Church 
separate from the civil Power. It was in his eyes not a 
government, so much as a means of moral and religious 
culture and salvation. He maintained its order rather for 
the efficacy than the strength which this would give. His 
idea had in it more of the Gothic splendor and mystery, 
exciting devotion, Leo's more of Grecian massiveness, 
exciting awe and submission. The one strove to make the 
Church powerful, the other to make it attractive. The art 
of the one was that of the ruler, the art of the other that 
of the priest. Leo loved to subdue and reign, Gregory to 
charm and captivate. 

And the contrast between them then is strikingly shown 
in their different regard for all that pertained to the per- 
sonal dignity of the Pope. " It has been usual," writes 
Gregory, to his vicar in Sicily, "for the bishops to come to 
Rome on the anniversary of the Pope's consecration. Let 
a stop be put to that. I have no pleasure in such vain and 
foolish display. If they wish to come to Rome, let it be 
on the Feast-day of. St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, 
by whose grace they are ministers of God." Leo wel- 
comed and rejoiced in personal honors as adding to the 
dignity of his station. Gregory would have none of them ; 
rejected presents of every kind ; and sometimes, when 
gifts of value were sent back to him, would sell them and 
send back the price to the donor, or, if he were not 
known, would give this for some charitable purpose. He 
had no love of showy robes for ordinary wear, though he 
loved to have them sufficiently splendid at the celebration 
of the Holy Feast. 



GREGORY THE GREAT. 135 

Though Gregory lived one hundred and fifty years later 
than Leo, his ecclesiastical position and assumption were 
not really so high as that of the great Pope. He did not, 
in fact, interest himself so much in what pertained to him- 
self and his office as in what pertained to the Church and 
its influence upon the world. He had more interest in 
spreading the Church abroad than in concentrating it 
at home, and he was always on the watch to see what 
could be done at the outposts. In pursuance of his early 
design, he sent, instead of an army, a peaceful company 
of forty monks to the distant isle of Britain. And he 
gained through them, in less than two years, a more signal 
victory than Caesar had ever been able to accomplish. 
The king of Kent and two thousand of his Saxon follow- 
ers embraced the Gospel. To appreciate the satisfaction 
of Gregory and the difficulty of the work, we may remem- 
ber that the relation of Britain to the rest of the world was 
something as that of the South Sea Islanders to us now. 

Gregory too kept an eye to the purity of doctrine and 
discipline among the priesthood. He was tolerant towards 
incorrigible heretics, but he would not have any heretics 
among the priests or the monks. He commended, as he 
practised before them the virtues of an ascetic life. And es- 
pecially was he eminent in the virtues of charity and alms- 
giving. In his time the revenues of the Church and of the 
Pope had reached a vast sum. Thousands of legacies had 
been left for pious purposes, and the faithful without num- 
ber who had embraced a monastic life, had yielded up 
their possessions to the Vicar of God. Most of these 
revenues were faithfully applied to religious purposes, and 
apart from the amount required for the ritual, vast sums 
were expended in giving to the poor and sick and friend- 
less the necessaries of life. Every day, at the appointed 
hour, came crowds of mendicants to receive their stipend ; 
and it was a sad, though beautiful sight to see matrons 
and virgins, and men too of noble descent, whom the 
calamities of the times had ruined, thronging to the palace 
which had been built by their ancestors' gifts to receive 
from a holy hand these gifts again. On the four great 
festivals of the year, abundant largesses were made. The 
accounts of these resemble the lavish expenses of a 
Roman triumph or a royal coronation. 



136 GBEGORY THE GREAT. 

To manage this distribution required great practical 
talent, and this Gregory had in an eminent degree. He 
was an admirable farmer of revenues, and, under his 
management, there was no loss of any interest. Though 
he gained no wealth for himself, he took care of the wealth 
of the Church. He did not disdain to care for the small 
things as well as the great. Modern Popes have boasted 
that they owned and could exact tribute from kingdoms. 
Gregory did not disdain to look after farms and stores and 
houses. And while he gave corn and wine to the poor, he 
got rents from many tenants among the rich. This is the 
reverse side of his superstitious character. The same 
man who could send to the Empress a piece of the sacred 
linen which had touched the bones of Peter, as if its holy 
alchemy would create in the hearts of all who beheld it 
the fine gold of the spirit, knew also how to make his 
farms yield their increase, and to coin the gold which per- 
isheth out of his earthly possessions. I have observed 
that to be true of the fanatics and the credulous generally. 

But the most important influence of Gregory was that 
which he had upon the ritual and the music of the Church. 
His superstitious tendency led him to make very much of 
symbols. And while he forbade the worship of these, he 
heartily commended their use. He would have the Sanc- 
tuary well-adorned ; and he loved that imposing service 
which seemed to cast a spiritual awe, and trembling 
wonder upon the senses of believers. He loved anything 
that would increase the objects and the strength of faith. 
Gregory may be said to be truly the Father of the Catholic 
mass. This stood in his view in the same relation to the 
ordinary prayers and services that the Pope did, in the 
view of Leo, to ordinary priests or bishops. It was the 
crowning act of devotion. 

Before the time of Gregory, the services of the temple 
were divided variously among the choir, the congregation, 
and the priests. But he systematized the whole, and 
ordered just how much should be done by each party, and 
what portions, how much spoken, how much sung, where 
they should kneel, where rise, and where be prostrate. 
The share of the people, small at the beginning, soon 
became smaller by the introduction of double choirs, 



GREGORY THE GREAT. 137 

which took all the parts assigned to the people, so that 
they had nothing left to do but to change their position. 
They could not even say " amen," and could only kneel 
their assent. 

The Liturgical service which Gregory gave to the 
Church continued to be the standard for many centuries. 
In the eleventh century it was substantially the form in 
the Churches of Italy, Germany, England, France and 
Spain. And his care extended too to the order of the 
mass on the festival days as well as Sundays. Each day 
of Holy Week had its appropriate service. Gregory how- 
ever did not make this liturgy obligatory on the different 
churches, but left them free to modify it in particulars, if 
they would only retain its essential features. 

To church music Gregory rendered the most important 
and lasting service. He marks the second epoch in the 
history of this branch of art. The music at the time of 
Ambrose admitted only four tones, what are now called 
the first, second, third and fifth, and was merely a succes- 
sion of changes on these four tones. Of course, the 
number of combinations of these were small, and the 
tunes had a great and not very musical sameness. No 
doubt there was real music which brought in other tones, 
for it is not to be supposed that the vocal organs of men 
then could make the various sounds in the compass of a 
human voice less naturally than now. But the science of 
written church music extended only to these four tones. 
The familiar tune called Peterboro' in our books is proba- 
bly a very lively specimen of the Ambrosian chant. The 
music was not by notes, but by figures, and the only variety 
of time is that which the rhythm of the song seems to 
suggest. A long syllable would be sung in twice the time 
of a short one. And the system altogether was something 
like the reading of the Hebrews, in which there "was no 
vowel, but every man formed the vowel sound according 
to the position of the consonants in each word. We 
would probably think it somewhat of a penance to hear a 
few hymns in this stinted measure of tone. But this was 
no doubt a great treat in the day when there was no more 
to be had. 

The chant which Gregory introduced in the Church 



138 GBEGOEY THE GREAT. 

though less melodious than the Ambrosian, had the higher 
element of a full harmony. He completed the octave, 
and of course immensely increased the number of combi- 
nations. By writing too the notes with separate charac- 
ters and not by numbers, he made music independent of 
the poetry or rhythm of the Church song, and they could 
apply it to prose as well as to poetry. To separate too 
sacred music from profane, in which there was then as 
there always will be, great lightness and constant variety, 
Gregory had all the chants written in notes of equal 
length. This sometimes had a curious effect when they 
were called to sing songs of praise, anthems and hallelujahs. 
These might easily have been mistaken for burial songs. 
But Gregory had not a very nice ear, and he loved to 
recognize in every service a difference between the songs of 
the sanctuary and those of the theatre or the street. This 
chant of equal notes had at least great dignity and 
solemnity, and checked every irreverent feeling. Unless 
it had some real power within it, it would not have 
kept its place so long in the worship of the Church. It 
has been conjectured that these notes of equal length were 
made so for the sake of imitating the natural simplicity of 
the speech of men, since originally all words consisted 
of one short syllable. The Hebrew for instance, contains 
hardly a word that cannot be reduced to three radical 
letters. If there are ten letters in a Hebrew w 7 ord and 
you can guess out the three original letters and find their 
meaning, you will find the meaning of the whole word. 
This music of the Gregorian chant too has a highly com- 
prehensive character. It not only seeks to imitate the 
early speech of men, but it adapts itself to the progress 
of speech and culture. Being independent of rhythm, it 
can be applied to any poetry, and by a slight change in 
arrangement made to suit any language. It will fall in 
best with old Latin words that were joined to it in the 
liturgy, and some parts of it now are used with these in 
the Catholic churches. But the soft Italian, the guttural 
German, and even our grating English will accept its 
measured flow. You will find in our Books of Tunes, 
especially in the older books, several that are arranged 
from the old Gregorian chant. Some of these are very 



GREGORY THE GREAT. 139 

familiar and are used in all conference meetings, — such 
tunes as Hamburg, Shawmut, Olmutz, Milan and Ghent. 
And many of the tunes attributed to Martin Luther are 
borrowed by him from this majestic original. 

Gregory did not confine his musical improvements to 
changes in the science. He also made many and import- 
ant changes in the practice. He established at Rome 
the first singing school of which we'have any record in 
Christian history. And this was not on the small scale of 
such establishments in our day, but was rather a great 
university of music, from which the directors and per- 
formers in choirs all over the Western Church were 
graduated. This singing school, though the earliest, and 
coming up at a time when the most barbarous customs 
prevailed in regard to a discipline of the voice, adopted 
only natural methods. It would be interesting to dwell 
on the form of instruction within it, but very little has 
been left us in regard to this. 

Gregory however had restrictions as to admission into 
this school. He would not have any priests or deacons in 
it. He said that their business was to preach and pray 
and help the poor, and that others could do the singing. 
He would not have either any of bad character in his 
school or in his choirs. He desired that a soft voice for 
the sacred office should go accompanied with a righteous 
life, and that the spiritual singer, while fascinating the 
people with his tones, should charm God by his virtues. 
Lamentably did the Church in later days fall off from 
his example. 

Gregory, like Ambrose, enriched the church with hymns 
of his own writing, as well as with chants and music. 
There are eight hymns remaining which are ascribed to 
him. Six of these are written in the regular rhyming 
style of ecclesiastical Latin, but the other two in the 
genuine Sapphic and Adonian stanza of the old Latin 
poets. They are all adapted to some peculiar festival of 
the Church. The most beautiful is the Hymn to the 
Supper. 

1. — O Sovereign Lord of Majesty! 

O Saviour Christ, — we call on thee 1 
Thine ear in pity opened be ! 
Thine eye our penitence to see ! 



14-0 GREGORY THE GREAT. 



2. — We pray by thy redeeming cross, 

Thy boundless love, that bore such loss, 
Thy bleeding wounds whose crimson flow, 
Did cleanse the flood of Adam's woe. 

3. — Thy glorious way was with the stars, 

Yet wearest thou here the dust and scars, 
Did'st share our anguish, dare our strife, 
To leave to man Eternal Life. 

4. — The dying world in darkness lay, 

Thy death its darkness warned away, 
From shame and sorrow man didst save, 
For sin the full Atonement gave. 

5. — They nailed thee to the fatal tree, 

They heard thy cry of agony. 

Earth shook, and midnight veiled the sun, 

The last redeeming woik was done. 

6. — Now gloriously in light on high 

Thou wear'st the robe of victory. 
While we thy cross and victory sing, 
Send down thy spirit, Christ our King. 

It is impossible to render this hymn into a spirited ver- 
sion on account of the sameness of sentiment in each 
stanza. We will try the short morning song, which has 
more vivacity. 

1. — We wake to praise at the early call, 

We hail with rapture the breaking light, 
And sing of the care which has kept us all 
Through the fearful night. 

2. — The peace of the saints in their heavenly home, 

The purer joys of the land of the blest, 
May we share on earth, till at last we come 
To eternal rest. 

3. — Let the Father and Son, and the Holy Ghost, 

Mysterious Three, whose grace faileth never, 
Unite our souls to the heavenly host 
Now and forever. 

We need not dwell long upon the characteristics of 
Gregory. He is one of those personages whose greatness 
and eminence we admit, yet in whom we feel there is 
something wanting ; one of those whose characters run in 
a narrow stream, though in that channel they are deep 



GREGORY THE GREAT. 141 

and rapid. We have for such a character a mingled 
feeling of pity and admiration. We respect its moral 
excellence while we compassionate its intellectual defect. 
In heart, purpose, and life, Gregory was one of the purest 
men who ever sat upon the Papal throne. He was 
humane, charitable, and disinterested. And yet he gave 
his sanction to practices, and introduced customs into the 
Church which corrupted it beyond all measure. He was a 
heavenly-minded prelate, yet he borrowed all the arts of 
the world for his devotion. Those who did not know the 
man, but judged him only by his schemes and operations 
would set him down as a cunning, ambitious, and un- 
scrupulous ruler. Those who were his friends forgot 
wholly his methods and his works, in the beauty of his 
life and the sincerity of his piety. The Roman priesthood 
saw in him only an humble monk. The patriarch of 
Constantinople feared in him a haughty rival and master. 
Gregory had been an invalid his life long. And his 
Pontificate, which he assumed at the mature age of fifty, 
was not destined to be of great duration. On the twelfth 
of March, 604, the day on which Catholics keep his festival, 
he expired, after having filled the Papal Chair thirteen years, 
six months and ten days. No miracles attended his death 
and he passed away as quietly as if he were a common 
man. But he left a blessed memory. And the title of 
the Great, which he earned during his life, was added to 
his name when no new mortal honor could adorn it. We 
can form a fair idea of his personal appearance from the 
rare relic of a family portrait, in which he is represented 
with his father and mother, and which was preserved for 
several centuries in the monastery of St. Andrew. It is 
valuable as a specimen of the painting of that epoch. It 
represents Gregory as a tall, lank figure, with long features, 
a bald crown, high forehead, and hooked nose ; altogether, 
as one biographer remarks, an imposing personage. The 
remains of Gregory rest in the Vatican, and his relics, 
such as his cloak, his girdle and other things, which be- 
longed to him, were kept many years after his death by 
the faithful, and did some marvelous works. His bed and 
cloak are still kept in the Lateran. So says his Catholic 
biographer. For Gregory, like Augustine and Cyprian, 



142 GREGORY THE GREAT. 



was fortunate enough to have a Boswell in an admiring 
deacon, who has preserved all the traditions about him. 

The writings of Gregory, though less numerous, and far 
less valuable than those of the other great Fathers of the 
Church, are the most numerous that any Pope has given 
to the world. He left a great many sermons and some 
commentaries. His exposition of Job is in sixty-five 
books. He treats it as an allegory. There are forty homi- 
lies upon the Gospels and twenty-two upon the Epistles. 
Of his great work on the Pastoral Care, we have spoken 
already. It was translated into Latin and Greek, and it 
was made afterward a duty of the bishops to read it as 
part of their necessary training. In his four books of 
Dialogues, which show his weak side, Gregory gives an 
account of all the miracles and absurd stories about the 
fathers which had come to his knowledge. Then there 
are fourteen books of letters, 810 in the whole, arranged 
by Gregory himself in chronological order, to persons of 
all ranks and classes, — emperors, kings, bishops, abbots, 
priests, deacons, nobles, generals, senators, judges, 
pious damsels, and respectable matrons, and even to 
slaves. And lastly there is the Sacramentaria and 
Antiphonaria, in which the whole revised order of the 
Church Liturgy and music is contained. This is a gigantic 
work ; and it gave rise to Gibbon's sneer that the abridged 
service of the Catholic Church by Gregory, contains 880 
folio pages, while the Lord's Prayer contains only half 
a dozen lines. 

Tne style of Gregory is barbarous, and stands on the 
limit of the brazen age of Latin literature. He knew 
nothing about Greek, and hated the classics. As for 
Hebrew, no one knew anything about that in his time. 
He prized his own writings at a low rate, and always ob- 
jected to their being used as text-books in the Church. 
But they were, nevertheless, and they still exert favorable 
influence. It was a sad falling off from the smooth 
periods of Augustine to the homely and crude sentences 
of Gregory. And henceforth until the time of the school- 
men, the monkish Latin became an unintelligible jargon. 

The influence of Gregory upon the Church is thus 
summed up by a German writer: "Gregory, the moral 



GREGORY THE GREAT. 143 

Reformer of his time, stands at the end of the ancient 
Church which culminated at the time of Leo in its out- 
ward form. Gregory brought together and arranged all 
that the Latin Church had given him in dogma, order and 
life, and completed this and prepared it for the future by 
establishing its cultus and form of worship. This is his 
positive influence. But he thus opened the way for the 
new Church by bringing the German nations into this form, 
and thus the key-stone of the ancient structure became 
the corner-stone of a new and world-wide spiritual empire." 
It is a singular fact that he was the last Pope who has 
been made a Saint. 



144 MOHAMMED. 



MOHAMMED AND HIS RELIGION. 

Arabia has been called the cradle of the human race. 
And this is true, not merely as a historical fact, but morally 
and spiritually. Somewhere within its ancient borders the 
tradition of all the Western world has placed the primitive 
Eden. All the finest legends of infancy cluster there. 
The most touching narratives, sacred or profane, to the 
curious imagination of childhood belong to the Arabian 
land. The earliest associations of beauty and mystery, of 
luxury, wildness or terror, of wickedness and piety, of 
skill and inspiration, all centre there. The recollections 
of our early clays are strangely grouped around this singu- 
lar land. We think of it as Arabia the Happy, where the 
air is fragrant with aloes, and myrrh, and frankincense, 
and every grove is a Paradise full of sweet waters, and of 
singing birds and laden boughs ; or as Arabia the Rocky, 
where God appears in his majesty, and there are gloomy 
caverns and rushing torrents, and awful thunderings ; 
where Seir, and Hor, and Sinai, and Horeb, and Pisgah 
lift their frowning summits ; or as Arabia the Desert, 
where the laden camel and the long caravan plod on their 
silent march over the hot sand, and the blast of death is 
whirling, and there is no water, nor food, nor path, nor 
hope. The genii, too, and fairies, the mystic lamps, the 
precious diamonds and pearls, the enchanted cities of our 
early days, — ■ the things which we were wont to dream 
over, belong to this land. The spiritual proverbs, the 
images of splendor, of loveliness, of faith, and of pa- 
tience all belong there. There the Queen of Sheba 
reigned. There the patriarchs gathered their clans, there 
Job suffered and disputed, there Moses wandered with his 
people, there God communicated with men, and gave upon 
the mountain his eternal commandments. 



MOHAMMED. 145 



Arabia is the cradle of the race, because it has joined 
to it those associations which are supernatural and spiritual 
in their character, — because it is a poetical land and sup- 
plies visions and fancies to that faculty of the soul which 
never grows old. We feel all the vivacity and buoyancy 
of childhood when we go back to its literature and legends. 
Even the long waste of the Koran, the Bible of Arabia, 
dry and dreary as its desert, does not prevent the childish 
fancies which crowd in our minds as we wander on through 
its pages. There is a freshness in the very thought of 
the land. It is in exact contrast with that sepulchral re- 
gion on the other shore of the Red Sea, where even Nature 
seems decrepit, and all is old and solemn and death-like, 
where we think of life and religion as among the tombs, 
and not in the gardens. No enthusiastic description of the 
beauty of the Nile around Thebes can make the idea of 
that place anything but desert, and melancholy, and still ; 
it is the ruins that we see. No account of the desert 
around Mecca, no description of its annoyances, its 
brackish pools and its filthy streets, can make it seem any 
thing else but bright, and new, and beautiful. You feel at 
Thebes, if there are spirits they are watching and weeping 
in marble silence, like Niobe in her woe. You feel at 
Mecca that the spirits are exulting and joyous, like 
Nourmahal and the Peri. 

In the permanent character of their institutions, in their 
preservation of the most ancient type of the pastoral 
life, in their love for literature and the arts, and in the 
eclectic character of their idolatry, the Arabs bear a strong 
resemblance to the Chinese. It is singular that on each 
corner of the great Asiatic Continent, should be found a 
people wholly uninfluenced by the civilizing influences of 
other nations. Arabian customs and laws are anterior to 
all authentic history. The habits of the Bedouin of the 
Desert are the same now as in the days of Abraham and 
the Patriarchs. The characteristic virtues are the same. 
The stranger who may be plundered and slain to-morrow 
will be served to-day and loaded with gifts from the same 
hand. Their wealth, their pleasures, their ambition, are 
all just what they were when Job was an Arab emir. 
Even their faith, though its name was changed with the 
10 



146 MOHAMMED. 



rise of God's new prophet, of whom we shall presently 
speak, retained many of its most ancient features. Its 
sacred places, seasons, services, and tenets are still pre- 
served ; and the Mussulman of to-day worships in the 
same way and on the same spot to which Arab pilgrims 
journeyed before Christ was born. Mecca, as a Holy 
City, is at least as old as Jerusalem. And the sacred 
well, Zemzem, was sung by poets before the voice of music 
had celebrated the gentle flow of Siloa's brook. The nn- 
conquered tribes there continued to go up yearly to their 
temple, when the children of Israel were prostrated and 
scattered ; and they could boast that none of their holy 
vessels became the spoil of a foreign foe. The people 
were invincible, and nature had made their fortresses 
secure. The victorious army of Augustus melted away 
when it invaded the land of the Arab. 

We need not go here into an analysis of the Arabian 
character. The Koran is the best guide to this, since 
Mohammed was wise enough to frame his directions ac- 
cording to the fixed tendencies of his nation. The religion 
of Islamism, unlike that of Judaism, was an uttering of 
customs and laws, already long established. Moses pro- 
claimed a new law. But Mohammed only uttered and 
condensed laws that for thousands of years had silently 
bound the people, adding what of good he could find in 
Judaism and Christianity. His work was no inspired 
original creation. 

At the time of Mohammed's appearing, the Arabs were 
still substantially idolaters, and their religion must be 
classed with other Pagan superstitions. Yet their idolatry 
was of an elevated and poetic cast. It made gods of the 
stars and the sun, and rejected things carved by man's 
device. Guided by these steady and mysterious deities, 
the Arab had learned to traverse his vast plains of barren 
sand, and he was cheered by their beams on the lonely 
mountain-top. They were fitting and natural objects of 
his worship. And though as Mecca became celebrated, 
grosser kinds of idolatry found place within the sacred 
precincts of the temple, still this first worship of the 
celestial bodies remained the substantial type of the 
Arabian Paganism, and the black stone survived all the 



MOHAMMAD. 147 



other ornaments of the Caaba, from the belief that this 
had miraculously fallen from heaven. Mohammed might 
break the other idols of his people, but could not abolish 
this. The Moslem of to-day kisses it with the same rever- 
ence as the Hashemites when Mohammed was unborn. 
This refined idolatry, however, did not prevent the 
grossest practices. The lives of men were sacrificed to 
propitiate the stars. But the breaking up of the Eastern 
nations by Grecian and Roman conquests drove the fugi- 
tives of many lands into the free and hospitable territory 
of Arabia. The Magi of Persia brought the Sabian wor- 
ship, which agreed quite nearly with the idolatry of the 
native tribes. The Jews, driven in numbers from Pales- 
tine by the fall of their country and their temple, found 
an asylum in the land which had sheltered their fathers, 
and in process of time engrafted many of their religious 
practices upon the Arabian ritual. The Christians, too, 
had their missionaries there, and had made large numbers 
of converts. The Christian sacred books were read in 
the beautiful Arab tongue, and the Christian proselytes 
were the most zealous if they were not the most numerous 
of all the Arab sectaries. In the western region, no man 
of culture, whatever his faith, could fail to be without 
some knowledge of Christianity. It has been a question 
much discussed whether Mohammed were a Christian 
before he declared his new religion. But it is certain that 
he was acquainted with Christianity and its principles. 

The Christianity of Arabia, however, was never in very- 
good repute with the Catholic Church. The romantic 
spirit of that region made it the fruitful mother of heresies. 
There were plenty of sects, and some of them held to 
extraordinary tenets. One denied the immortality of the 
soul. Another worshipped the Virgin Mary as God, and 
made her the third person in the Trinity. And we cannot 
wonder that where such absurdities were rife, a zealot 
like Mohammed should try to improve upon the religion 
that authorized them. Where there were so many sects 
and so many religions, and where all seemed to be a mix- 
ture of truth and falsehood it was natural that some man 
of genius should try to construct a new order out of the 
confusion. 



I4§ MOHAMMED. 



The tribe of Koreish had long been the chief of the 
Arabian clans. They were the hereditary possessors 
of Mecca, and were equally remarkable for their valor in 
battle, their skill in, judgment, and their fidelity in religion. 
One of this tribe, Hashem, obtained the charge of the 
Caaba, or temple, and became thereby the spiritual Lord 
of all Arabia. The renown of Hashem was eclipsed by 
that of his son, Abdel Motalleb, whose prowess and- up- 
rightness were bountifully rewarded in a life of one hundred 
and ten years, and a family of thirteen sons and six 
daughters. The eldest of these sons, Abdallah, is sung 
by Arabian poets as fairest of all their young men ; 
and on the night of his marriage two hundred damsels are 
said to have died in despair. The wife that Abdallah 
chose was of the same noble origin as himself. And in 
the birth of their only son the lordship and romance of 
the nation seemed all to be centered. Without recounting 
the prodigies that piety has attached to this birth, we need 
not wonder that it was classed as a special Providence. 
For the death of Justinian had just freed the tribes from 
the fear of any new Roman invasion, and the Abyssinians 
had been repulsed effectually from their impious invasion 
of the sacred city. If the Christian seems to find that the 
birth of Jesus in Bethlehem of Judea, of the royal line of 
David, was in the fullness of time, so the Moslem finds in 
the birth of Mohammed in Mecca of Arabia, of the 
princely tribe of Koreish, a special divine appointment. 
This birth was about the year a. d. 570. 

Of the many prodigies related of Mohammed's infancy, 
one deserves to be recorded, — that two angels took the 
child from his nurse's arms, and tearing out his heart 
squeezed from it the black drop, which is the cause of all 
sinful desires and the seat of sin, and thus made him like 
Jesus and the Virgin Mary, who alone of all mortals were 
born without the black drop. The heart was restored 
again, pure. But we may find cause to think that the 
whole of the drop was not pressed out. 

The parents and grandfather of Mohammed died while 
he was in infancy, and left him to the especial charge of 
his eldest uncle, Abu Taleb. By this man he was brought 
up with great care, and allowed many privileges. His 



MOHAMMED. 149 



uncle was a merchant and made journeys to Egypt, and 
Persia, and Syria, for the sale of his wares. On these 
journeys Mohammed learned more than the tricks of trade 
and the customs of the people. He was constantly gain- 
ing an insight into the faith of these various nations. At 
the age of fourteen he took part in the war of the 
Koreishites, which was reckoned infamous, because waged 
in an unlawful month. This shows that he was not taught 
to be over-strict in his religious observances. Not much 
is authentic in his history until his marriage with Kadijah, 
a rich widow of two husbands, who first took him under 
her patronage, and then made him her master. The 
twenty years difference in their ages did not stand much 
in his way. He became by the connection too rich and 
important to be troubled by scandals; and he found in 
Kadijah all that his heart could desire. For thirteen 
years he led a quiet, domestic life, broken occasionally by 
some days of rioting, but in the main decent, industrious 
and comfortable. He sacrificed to the gods, while he 
became familiar with the views of the Jews and Christians. 
And, as his uncle seemed obstinately determined to live, 
his own course seemed likely to pass without special dis- 
tinction. But he was ambitious, and if he could not be a 
ruler, he determined to be a prophet. 

At the age of thirty-eight the first indication of this new 
dignity appeared. In Mount Hara, near Mecca, was a 
cave, to which Mohammed was accustomed constantly to 
resort. Here, piece by piece, the Koran was composed. 
The prophet himself could not read or write. But the 
tradition is that a Persian Jew and a Nestorian Monk were 
the amanuenses who recorded the revelations as they fell.' 
It was a common scandal that these men were the authors 
of many of his precepts. But Mohammed was a man of 
too much power, knowledge and eloquence, to need any 
more than mechanical assistance. He should have the 
honor of being the author of his work. 

At the age of forty-three Mohammed came forward 
with his new claim. He declared that there was but one 
God, and that he was the prophet of that God. It was a 
novel proposition and one not likely to be taken up en- 
thusiastically by that stationary race. His first convert 



150 MOHAMMED. 



was his wife. He had easy work with her, for her love 
aided his argument. The Arabian annalist adds a miracle 
to the process. But it is quite as likely that Kadijah may 
have been moved by the mention of the honorable place 
she was about to have in the sacred record as one of the 
four perfect women. The next convert was his cousin 
Ali, an enthusiastic, hair-brained young man, who received 
the hand of Fatima when she was but nine years old, — 
another of the four perfect women. The third was Taid, 
a slave, to whom the prophet gave his freedom. By con- 
versation and persuasion, in the course 6f three years he 
had gained over some eight or ten of the noble youths of 
Mecca. But it was very slow work. There was no 
enthusiasm kindled by the new doctrine, and the pilgrims 
to Mecca had no thought that a prophet was there. 

During this period the revelations were secretly multi- 
plying and the Koran was increasing. But at last the 
prophet got tired of this slow progress and began openly 
to proclaim his mission. At a banquet which he gave to 
his relatives he treated them to very simple food, but to a 
sermon on the new plan. He made fair promises if they 
would become his disciples. When no one answered, his 
cousin Ali began to threaten, which first made them laugh 
and afterwards made them angry. From that time forward 
the new gospel, which had before been ridiculous, now 
became obnoxious. Each new convert increased the rage 
and hatred of the tribe ; and when Omar, the most emi- 
nent of their young men, and a former rival of Mohammed, 
gave in his adhesion the war broke out, the party of 
Mohammed were banished, and he himself was obliged to 
be very circumspect. So the thing continued ' for ten 
years. The new prophet had in that time converted a few 
of the leading men, most of his own family, had extorted 
a confession from his dying uncle, and had lost his most 
valuable auxiliary in the death of his wife Kadijah. He 
now began to take a more popular course. He mingled 
with the pilgrims in the sacred festivals. He inflamed 
their imagination by his promises of sensual delights. He 
flattered their prejudices by praising their scrupulous 
piety, and showing that the new system retained the an- 
cient customs. He practised, too, the conspicuous virtues, 



MOHAMMED. 151 



and made them see that he was a saint, if they suspected 
that he was a fanatic. He made his prime doctrines sim- 
ple, while he allowed mystical rites, appealing thus at once 
to the sense and to the credulity of his hearers. And his 
persuasions were not without effect. Some who heard 
him carried away the report of his wisdom and sanctity, 
and he began to have apostles. 

To supply the loss of his first companion, who left to him 
her fortune, Mohammed took to himself two young wives 
from noble families. This circumstance was not likely to 
increase his general popularity or his domestic comfort, 
though the two wives got along very well together. The 
favorite was extremely young, being only seven years old. 
But the downfall of Mohammed in Mecca was mainly 
prepared by his fantastic relation of a journey into and 
through heaven, which he took one night about the twelfth 
year of his mission, with the angel Gabriel. This extra- 
ordinary journey is variously related by the different 
chronicles, some contenting themselves with a modest ab- 
stract of his interview with Adam and the Patriarchs, with 
Jesus and John, — others giving minute descriptions of the 
seven heavens as Mohammed saw them. The chief wonder 
of the first heaven seems to have been an enormous cock, 
that crowed so loud every morning as to be heard by 
all creatures on earth except men and fairies. The second 
heaven was of gold, the third of diamonds, the fourth of 
emeralds, the fifth of adamant, the sixth of carbuncle, and 
the seventh of celestial light. In all these heavens were 
holy men and angels of enormous height. The seventh 
heaven was all full of angels grouped around Jesus. One 
of them was remarkably gifted, with a vocal power defying 
all calculation ; — for he had seventy thousand heads, and 
in each head seventy thousand mouths, and in each mouth 
seventy thousand tongues, and to each tongue seventy 
thousand distinct voices, and each voice was eternally 
praising God. One would think that other angels in such 
a company as this would be superfluous. The crowning 
grace of the journey, however, was in the private inter- 
view that Mohammed had with God, — who showed him 
his destined seat in heaven, and gave him for the formula 
of his religion, God is one, and Mohammed is his prophet, 



15 2 MOHAMMED. 



The various absurdities of this narrative were so glaring 
that some of the prophet's judicious friends advised him 
to keep it to himself. But he felt moved to declare it in 
open company, and some rather puzzling questions were 
asked him about it. One in particular, as to the temple of 
Jerusalem, troubled him, since in the first place, the ques- 
tioner had been there, and in the second, Mohammed had 
represented the night of his visit as extremely dark. But 
he got out of the dilemma by the assistance of the angel 
Gabriel, who favored him with an extempore plan of the 
temple. 

This kind of blasphemy, and a league which he formed 
with some converts from another tribe, finally determined 
the people to assassinate him. A number were banded 
together in pursuit of him, agreeing to divide the crime. 
He discovered the plot and made his escape by night, 
exchanging garments with Ali, his son-in-law, so that when 
his pursuers saw his green vest through the crevice of the 
door they felt sure of him and relaxed their scrutiny. He 
had close work however in escaping. Three days he was 
hidden in a cave which escaped his enemies search, 
because a spider had spun across its mouth and a pigeon 
had laid two eggs there, showing that it could not have 
been entered. He reached at last Yathreb, or Medina, 
was hospitably entertained there and became a resident 
until his death. His flight is the era from which dates 
the history of the Mussulman faith. As Christians reckon 
it was on Friday, the 16th of July, a. d. 622. But the 
Moslem of to-day dates not in the nineteenth century of 
our Lord, but in the year 1248 of the Hegira. Medina 
henceforth has shared the holiness of Mecca, and is 
coupled with it when the first is mentioned. There Mo- 
hammed found the people more docile, and converts far 
more abundant. 

Thus far the mission of Mohammed had been a peace- 
ful one. He had used only the means of argument and 
persuasion, in a different way certainly from Jesus of 
Nazareth, but still without any application of force. But 
he found that this apostolic method did not make converts 
fast enough, and his influence at Medina determined him 
to propagate his faith as well as gratify his revenge, by the 



MOHAMMED. J S3 



argument of the sword. He organized his disciples into 
an army, and sent out bands sometimes to plunder cara- 
vans and sometimes to battle with the idolaters. The first 
performance seemed to be justified by the promise that 
the faithful should possess all the good things of this life ; 
the other by the fearful woes which the Koran denounced 
upon infidelity. The valor of the Moslems, or the favors 
of God and the aid of angels, as Mohammed preferred to 
call it, gained them the first battle, and the men of Mecca 
were slaughtered and captured in numbers. One of their 
poets composed an elegy on the occasion. During the 
whole engagement Mohammed was praying in his house. 

In the ten years of Mohammed's life after the hegira, 
he was in a constant turmoil of wars, intrigues, and out- 
rages, none of which were very remarkable for their 
religious earnestness. Now he fought with the Jews, whom 
he so bitterly hated that he ordered the faithful to turn to 
Mecca in prayer instead of Jerusalem, which had before 
been the place to which they looked, and was so laid down 
in the Koran. Now he made forays into the distant tribes 
of happy Arabia, bringing back from each spoil enough 
and a wife or two, while he left his religion behind as a 
blessed exchange. The alternative was Islamism or death. 
It was the most convenient way and saved a great many 
words. Time would fail us to review even all these 
skirmishes, and plots, and pitched battles, which appear 
ridiculously petty to those who are accustomed to the 
details of warfare in other nations. 

For the first few years the success was not all on one 
side. The Koreishites were brave and shrewd, and the 
Mussulmen met with some severe repulses. But they 
were obstinate and had God on their side, and were in the 
main successful. In the sixth year of the hegira, Mo- 
hammed felt strong enough to proclaim himself at once 
king and chief priest, and to add a temporal rule to his 
divine sovereignty. He was inaugurated under a tree, 
and he built a pulpit in his mosque to preach from, from 
which he promulgated both his law and his gospel. After 
this, he set himself resolutely to conquer Mecca, and 
though several times repulsed and turned aside, in the 
eighth year of the hegira obtained his wish and dictated 



154 MOHAMMED. 



his terms as king to the city from which he had been 
forced to flee for his life. They had an easy release. 
Only a few suffered from their hostility and the change of 
worship which the conqueror required was very slight. He 
set them the example by performing the circuit of the 
Caaba, and reverently kissing the black stone. The con- 
quest of Mecca was the triumph of his religion in Arabia. 
The various tribes vied with each other in embracing 
Islamism. And the army with which the prophet went 
out to convert or to exterminate those who continued 
obstinate exceeded thirty thousand men. Envoys began 
to come in from the east and the west to offer congratula- 
tions. Poets sang their panegyrics. The Roman emperor 
deigned to answer with some valuable presents, the polite 
invitation of the Arabian "prophet to embrace his faith. 
The Egyptian viceroy sent him two young maidens while 
he considered the proposal. Even from Persia and Abys- 
sinia favorable messages came. And a master-stroke of 
policy was in commanding that the gates of the Caaba 
should be closed on pain of death to all but genuine Mus- 
sulmen. 

In the last year of Mohammed's life he made a grand 
pilgrimage from Medina to Mecca. In his train were one 
hundred thousand of his enthusiastic disciples. All along 
the way the people flocked to meet him. It was a 
triumphal progress. The ceremonies in the temple are 
minutely described, — how he went seven times round the 
Caaba, — how he prayed all the night, — how he sacrificed 
sixty-three camels and freed sixty-three slaves, to corre- 
spond with his age at the time, — how he drank seven 
times of the well Temsem, and prayed on Mount Araba 
on the ninth day, the mountain where Adam and Eve 
met after a parting of one hundred and twenty years. 
All these and more you may find in the chronicle of 
Abalfeda. 

It was the common belief of the converts that their 
prophet could not die ; and there was great consternation 
when in the eleventh year of the hegira on the 8th of 
June, 632, A. D., the sickness of thirteen days brought 
the Holy One of God to the tomb, as if he were a com- 
mon man. Some who had read the New Testament's 



MOHAMMED. 155 



account expected a resurrection. But the wise were 
turned aside from their doubts about the reality of his 
death by disputes about his place of burial. This was 
finally decided in favor of Medina, and was accomplished 
with great pomp and ceremony in a grave under his private 
chamber. Mohammed died without fear or regret. He 
saw his mission accomplished, his religion triumphant, 
he had enjoyed enough of life, and had already a large 
foretaste of the Paradise which he believed awaited him. 
The angel of death requested permission through Gabriel 
to enter ; which was granted, and the prophet died. 

It has long been a mooted question whether Mohammed 
was a fanatic or an imposter. And the discussion is about 
as doubtful in its issue as that concerning the sincerity of 
Oliver Cromwell. It is easy for the zealous Christian to 
argue that the contriver of so many absurdities and false- 
hoods must have been a hypocrite, but Moslem authorities 
will not look at the matter in such a light. Those who 
demand a good moral character according to the Christian 
standard, as presumptive evidence of religious sincerity, 
will not be gratified in the case of Mohammed. He was 
unquestionably a sensualist in his private life, and though 
not cruel or tyrannical, was fond of power and determined 
to have his own way. He was ambitious and rapacious, a 
true Arab in his perseverance and his vindictiveness. We 
must take with great allowance the glowing account of his 
virtues which his friends have left, and we need not receive 
as the perfect proof of his humility, the fact that he 
mended his own clothes and shoes. Many a proud man 
has done that, without any abatement of his pride. His 
physical structure, his thick neck, his hooked nose, his 
monstrous head, and the whole form of his features indi- 
cate more vigor than gentleness, more obstinacy than 
spirituality. He was no doubt very much such a man as 
Oliver Cromwell, in whom enthusiasm and ambition were 
mingled in about equal proportions. He was one of those 
whose passions argue to them, whose inclinations become 
to them as truths. That he might have been from the 
beginning sincere in believing his own religion divine, is 
reasonable enough, since it was a decided advance, both 
morally and spiritually, upon the religions at that time 



ic,6 MOHAMMED. 



existing around him. Impostors of that stamp usually 
become sincere, if they are not so at the beginning. And 
each new convert that they make confirms their delusion. 
It is very doubtful at first if Mohammed thought of the 
temporal power which he afterwards gained or of becom- 
ing at all a soldier. He was probably sincere in his inten- 
tion of religious reform, though he thought it expedient 
and comfortable in accomplishing this to secure an honora- 
ble place at the head of this reform. It was the disap- 
pointment and persecution which he met with which de- 
veloped the bad traits of his character and made him an 
assassin and plunderer, as well as a prophet. The heredi- 
tary guardian of the temple might well devise a purer 
system of worship. But the Arabian fugitive could not 
forgive or forget that he had been insulted and hated for 
his disinterested zeal. 

But it is of small importance to us Christians to settle 
precisely what was the motive or character of Mohammed. 
Certain it is that his imposture has not shared the common 
fate of impostures. Whatever the man, there must have 
been some reality in that religion that could make in ten 
years the conquest of so vast a country, and could bring 
such tribes of men as the free and obstinate Arabs into its 
almost unanimous support. Large bodies of men cannot 
be compelled so rapidly into the support of a gigantic 
falsehood. And if we look at the Moslem faith in its re- 
lation to the character and institutions of the Oriental 
nations we may see that it is a natural faith to arise and 
grow there. 

The religion of Mohammed is properly called Islamism, 
meaning the devotion of oneself to God. It is contained 
in the Koran, or book, a word derived from the Arabic 
verb karaa, to read, meaning the thing which ought to be 
read. This term Koran, is indifferently applied to the whole 
or to a part of the revelations of Mohammed. The syllable 
Al, sometimes prefixed to the word, is merely the article, 
the. The whole book is divided into one hundred and 
fourteen portions or chapters, of very unequal length, some 
of them in a single paragraph, some of them as long as 
the books of the Bible. The chapters are not distinguished 
by the number, but by their title, which is taken either 



MOHAMMED. 157 



from the subject which they treat of, or from some remarka- 
ble person or thing mentioned in them. They mention 
the place also in which they are revealed, whether Mecca 
or Medina, or both. The larger portion were revealed at 
Mecca. All the copies of the Koran are not alike. There 
are various readings in great numbers as of the Bible. 
There are seven principal editions. In these the number- 
ing of the verses is different. But they all contain the 
same number of words and of letters. The Arabians had 
the same fondness with the Jews for cabalistic interpreta- 
tions. They count 323,015 letters in all, and some of 



them have gone so far as to frame a concordance of the 
letters and to chronicle the exact number of times that 
each is used. 

Besides this unequal division into chapters and verses, 
there is an equal division and sub-division into portions 
for the purposes of prayer and the temple service, as was 
the case with the Jewish Law. These were in some cases 
so arranged that the whole Koran should be read over in 
each chapel every day. Some of the chapters begin with 
peculiar marks, which are the signs of special sanctity. 
Thus the second begins with A. S. M. 

The style of the Koran is pure and beautiful to the last 
degree, and it is one of the proofs of his inspiration to 
which Mohammed confidently appealed. He maintained 
that only God's prophet could have composed a work 
which the first poets of the most poetical nation of earth 
gave up as beyond their rivalry. In fact, the Koran is a 
sort of prose poem. The close of the chapters is rhyth- 
mical, and the whole flow is highly musical. It is full of 
metaphor and imagery and bold and extravagant flights. 
It has no resemblance to the modesty of the Christian 
Scriptures. Mohammed writes like one who is conscious 
of doing some great thing. God is his helper, more than 
he is the instrument of God. 

It would be impossible at the close of this lecture, or 
even in a whole lecture, to give you a full idea of the con- 
tents of the Koran, or to make any close or just analysis. 
I can only indicate the leading views and characteristics 
without quoting any passages. As we read the book in 
English, all the extraordinary beauties of its style in the 



I5 8 MOHAMMED. 



original are lost in its dreary and stupid monotony. Very 
few Christian readers would have patience to toil through 
those one hundred and fourteen revelations. And if the 
Christian practice of rewarding children for reading in 
order the sacred pages prevails in Moslem lands, the 
largest piece of gold will be fully earned by the child who 
shall have achieved the Koran through all its chapters. 

Islam, or the religion of the Koran, is divided into two 
distinct portions. Iman, or faith, and Din, or practice. 
There is one fundamental point of faith and four of prac- 
tice. So we see that the five points of religion were not 
an original idea with our Calvinistic ancestors. 

The fundamental doctrine of the Koran is the unity of 
God. This is taught throughout the book in its strictness 
and simplicity. It is this which Mohammed declared that 
he, in common with all true prophets, was sent especially 
to teach. Abraham and Moses, and Jesus, all were sent 
to remind men of it, but since their revelations were 
but partially received and had been greatly corrupted, 
Mohammed was sent as the final messenger to declare it 
explicitly to all people. The Sabians had the doctrine, 
but it was only the confused worship of a vast planetary 
system. The Jews had the doctrine, but their excessive 
reverence for Jehovah's name, and their reliance on their 
priestly mediators, tended to destroy for them its effect 
and its integrity. The Christians had the doctrine, but 
they had transformed it into the incomprehensible idea of 
a Trinity in Unity. Mohammed restored the primitive 
view, and laid down his fundamental article that there is 
but one God, and Mohammed is his prophet. 

Under this general head six specific views are included. 
First, Belief in God. Second, In his angels, of which 
there are three classes, — the good, the bad, and the genii, 
who are intermediate between the two. The four princi- 
pal angels were Gabriel, Michael, Azrael, and Israfil. 
This doctrine concerning angels was partly borrowed from 
the Persians and partly from the Jews. Third, Belief in 
the Scriptures. By this term they reckon one hundred 
and four books, all of which must be believed, but one 
hundred of which are wholly lost, ten given to Adam, 
fifty to Seth, thirty to Enoch, and ten to Abraham. The 



MOHAMMED. 159 



other four given successively to Moses, David, Jesus and 
Mohammed are the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Gospel'' 
and the Koran. Three of these are so much corrupted 
and altered that no credit should be given to any copy in 
the hands of Jews or Christians. It is probable that the 
Mohammedans possessed some imperfect copies of the 
Pentateuch and the Gospels. But the perfection of the 
Koran, which, according to Mohammed, was to be miracu- 
lously guarded from corruption, made it unnecessary to 
search any other Scriptures. They were content like the 
majority of Christians now to take their Biblical faith on 
trust. Mohammed had a very convenient way of getting 
over the contradictory passages of the Koran by his law 
of abrogation. A later passage abrogated an earlier, as in 
our laws. This law of abrogation is of three kinds. First, 
of both the letter and the sense ; second, of the letter 
without the sense, and third, of the sense without the 
letter. 

The fourth specification of doctrine is belief in the 
prophets. Of these Mohammed numbers upwards of 
one and some say two hundred thousand. Three hundred 
and thirteen of these were special Apostles, and six of 
these Apostles, Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, 
and Mohammed were the founders of the new dispensa- 
tions. There were these three degrees of honor, but all 
the prophets were held to be sound in doctrine and pure in 
life, and all to teach substantially one religion. Mo- 
hammed maintained that his mission had been abundantly 
prophesied. Upon the fifth article, the belief in a general 
resurrection and a future judgment, the Koran is very 
full. Mohammed held that immediately after death a 
special commission of angels examines the departed in 
his tomb, in a sitting posture ; and that, according to 
their decision, Azrael, the angel of death, proceeds to 
separate the soul from the body with greater or less vio- 
lence, according to the excellence of the person. The 
souls of the prophets enter at once into Paradise. The 
souls of the martyrs undergo a sort of delightful purga- 
tory in the crops of the birds that eat of the fruits and 
drink of the waters of paradise. As to the souls of com- 
mon believers, nobody knows exactly where they are. 



1 6 o MOB A MMED. 



They may be lingering round their tombs or they may be 
flying about in the shape of birds, or they may be hidden 
in the waters of the holy well Zemzem. At any rate, they 
shall hereafter be joined with their risen bodies, and sum- 
moned to Paradise. The chief descriptions of the Koran 
are of the signs of this resurrection and the nature of 
this great reward. There are eight lesser and seventeen 
greater signs, some of them borrowed from the Christian 
Scriptures, and some of them very fantastic ; one, for in- 
stance, being the decay of faith, another the darkening of 
the moon, another the coming of Jesus, and so on. 

The day of judgment finally comes with three blasts of 
the trumpet by the angel Israfil, the blast of terror, of 
annihilation, and of resurrection. The Angel Gabriel 
holds the gigantic balance trembling over hell and heaven. 
And the good and the wicked are sent each to their own 
place. There are seven heavens ancj^seven hells, and a 
limbo for those whose sins and virtues are equally balanced. 
All infidels are in hell, the Christians in the third, the 
hypocrites in the seventh. All believers are in heaven, 
the perfect in Paradise, the seventh heaven, just under the 
throne of God. Good Christian writers hold that the 
crowning blasphemy of the Moslem faith is in the account 
which it gives of the heavenly state and the enjoyments of 
Paradise, — of its eating and drinking, and its black-eyed 
houris. But many of these descriptions are borrowed 
verbatim from the Jewish Scriptures, and all may be found 
in the celestial ideas of other religions. Sensual, as was 
Mohammed's idea of Paradise, it was not wholly sensual. 
It had in it the element of progress, and one of its prom- 
ised joys was the sight of the face of God. Yet there is 
no doubt that the chief impression that it gave to his dis- 
ciples was one of absolute voluptuousness. It is singular 
that wine, which Mohammed strictly prohibited on earth, 
should have formed one of the chief pleasures of heaven. 
It is sometimes said that the Mohammedan religion denies 
to women any souls. But portions of hell are largely sup- 
plied with them, and some are admitted into heaven. I 
might go largely into the details of Mohammed's view 
concerning the world beyond the grave. But the various 
ways in which it has been interpreted prove that though 



MOHAMMED. 161 



full it was not perfectly clear. And it is not a view which 
would take much hold of or have much charm for a 
spiritually-minded man. 

The sixth belief is in the predestination of God. This 
Mohammed held to be thorough, minute, and absolute, — 
that all a man's acts, and words, and thoughts, and fortune 
were fixed from all eternity. And he impressed this idea 
indelibly upon his system. The most striking character- 
istics of all Moslem nations to this day is their blind 
fatalism, their submission to destiny, their indifference to 
death, or calamity, believing all to be foreordained. Mo- 
hammed found this doctrine of great service in propa- 
gating his religion by the sword. 

There are four points of practice or ceremonial religion 
in the Koran. The first is prayer. This is the chief of 
duties. It comes five times in a day. And even now 
every good Moslem is as punctual as ever to perform his 
devotions and will leave any work when he hears the voice 
of the muezzin calling from the tower. Prayer includes 
several elements, — washing, of which great account was 
made, — the Koran may almost be called the Gospel of 
cleanliness, — circumcision, a rite borrowed from the Jews, 
yet religiously observed, — modest apparel, and turning 
toward Mecca. Their mosques are so constructed that 
this can be done without mistake. The times are just 
before sunrise, just after noon, just before sunset, just 
before dark, and shortly after dark. The forms of prayer 
are given, and the practice of telling beads prevails, as in 
the Catholic Church. The second point of practice is 
alms-giving. This is of two kinds, legal and voluntary, — 
one a matter of compulsion, the other of choice. The 
compulsory alms were distributed to the poor or used in 
the service of the temple and in -warfare. The Moham- 
medans, however, were fortunate in having no hierarchy 
to support, no order of lazy priests to pay. The duty of 
alms-giving was acknowledged by the hereditary customs 
of the people. 

The third point of practice is fasting. This is of three 
kinds, — abstinence from eating, restraint of the senses, 
and restraint of the heart. The fasts were voluntary and 
regular. He was the holiest who had most of the former, 



MOHAMMED. 



but all were expected to fast during the whole month Ra- 
madan, which was the sacred season when the Koran was 
revealed. As this month was variable, sometimes the fast 
became very severe. It consisted of abstinence from all 
food and drink, and pleasure of every kind from sunrise 
to sunset of every one of the twenty-nine days. 

The fourth article of practice is the pilgrimage to Mecca. 
This great act must be performed at least once in his life 
by every believer, or heaven will be shut against him. It 
was performed by some every .year. It was an ancient 
custom of the people and was only continued by Moham- 
med. It was attended by many complicated and absurd 
ceremonies, by sacrifices and prayers without number, and 
sometimes by battle. 

The prohibitions of the Koran are numerous and excel- 
lent. Wine, gambling, usury, divination, the exposure 
and murder of children and other abuses were strictly 
forbidden. Swine's flesh was made as unclean as to the 
Jew. And indeed many of Mohammed's restrictions are 
borrowed from the Jewish Law. Mussulmen do not 
always observe these restrictions. But still they form part 
of the religion. And it has been observed of Moslem 
countries that they are nearly free from gambling and 
intemperance, the double curse of the Christian civiliza- 
tion. Mohammed objects to chess, — not so much on 
account of the game as of the idolatrous influence of the 
little figures with which it is played. 

The Koran was not only a body of religious precepts 
but also of civil statutes. It contains laws with regard 
to education, marriage, war and government, but want of 
time compels me to pass these by. They are not of much 
interest. We might speak also at length of the ritual of 
Islam, — of the various 1 customs arising from the necessi- 
ties of the new faith. And of the sects, too, almost as 
numerous as the Christian, who arose to divide the unity 
of the prophet's household. Islamism, though it may 
seem to us a gigantic imposture, had also its minor impos- 
tures, and its false prophets. 

It would be interesting, too, to trace the conquests of 
the new religion out of Arabia, how it spread in the East 
and West, exterminating Christianity in one direction and 



MOHAMMED. 163 



rivalling it in the other, — how it subdued the land of the 
Magi and established the romantic and powerful kingdom 
of the Caliphs, — how it settled in the Holy Land and 
built its mosque upon Mount Moriah, — how it seized the 
city of Constantine, and spurned the Christian dog from 
the harbor of the Golden Horn, — how it followed up the 
ancient Nile, and substituted another teaching for the 
tradition of Pharoah's, — how it overran the deserts of 
Libya, planted the crescent on the ruins of Carthage, — ■ 
and built temples to Allah and his prophet by the pillars 
of Hercules and on the hills of Iberia. But this would 
lead us into too broad a field. It is not a historical sketch 
of the religion of Mohammed that we propose. We 
shall see enough of it when we consider the religious his- 
tory of Spain and the wars of the Crusades. Our episode 
has already been long enough, perhaps you will think dry 
enough. But if you find this short sketch of the origin 
and character of the Koran fatiguing, you will find the 
book itself far more wearisome. One great drawback 
upon the happiness of Mohammed's Paradise must be the 
burden of reading the Koran there. He should have 
numbered it as penance and torment. 



164 UILDEBBAND. 



VI. 

HILDEBRAND AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 

We have already traced the internal organization of the 
Catholic Church from its small democratic beginnings to its 
complete and magnificent hierarchy. We have seen its 
singular order eliminated and developed, its form of doc- 
trine written out in creeds and confirmed by councils, its 
rules of life settled by the authority of saints and the prac- 
tice of centuries. We have seen it in conflict with heathen- 
ism and in conflict with heresy ; how it exterminated the 
ancient Pagan, how it silenced the new blasphemer. We 
have watched it slowly recovering from the victorious 
Moslem its proper losses, and silently converting the bar- 
barian that sought to destroy it. We have followed its 
missionaries in their martyr labors for church extension, 
and its scholars in their skillful plans for Church concen- 
tration. We have seen the Church contending with 
ignorance in the school, and with worldliness in the 
cloister, vanquishing the superstitious by its cathedral 
images and ritual, and employing the fanatic in its monas- 
tic discipline. We have gone on with the Catholic faith 
in its theological, its social, and its ecclesiastical march to 
power, have discovered its victory in doctrine, and dis- 
cipline, and system. Its political contest now remains to 
be noticed. One victory more is needed to place it at the 
head of the nations, as well as of the faithful. The 
Church has fought with infidels, and heretics, and schis- 
matics, and profligates ; it has had its Justins, its Jeromes, 
its Leos, and its Benedicts ; it has made the Latin creed, 
and the Latin liturgy, and the Latin canons, the laws ol 
all the Roman or Teutonic nations ; has brought church- 
men and laymen near and far, to look up to Rome with 
reverence, the bishop to bow before its supremacy and the 
knight to own allegiance to its sanctity; it only remains to 



HILDEBEAND. 165 



contend with the State, and to raise its seat above that of 
Empires. 

Special conflicts between the ecclesiastical and the civil 
powers had not been wanting in any age of Church 
history. From the time when Peter resisted at Jerusalem 
the rulers of Israel, to the time when Hildebrand an- 
nounced his great formula of papal sway, the ministers of 
Christ had always been found to defy kings and princi- 
palities, and powers. Ambrose had humbled the Roman 
Emperor to the lowest stool of penitence. Leo had met 
Attila with successful menace, when the scourge of God 
came fresh from his plunder. Monarchs had been raised 
up and put down already by the word of priests. The 
threats of the cloister had brought trembling into the 
palace, and the anathemas of the Church had checked 
more than once the severe decrees of the king. In 
these special conflicts the religious power was generally 
sure to carry the day. But as the Church grew broader 
and more unwieldy, and the nations broke asunder from 
the old Roman Empire, the conflicts between it and the 
State became less frequent, policy took the place of prin- 
ciple, and it aimed to use the vices of kings instead of de- 
nouncing them. It found the alliance of the greater 
sovereigns of weight in confirming its power within itself. 
It was glad to keep the State upon its side in its warfare 
against heresy and schism. It needed the strong arm of 
soldier kings to sustain its Papal decrees. And when 
Charlemagne received, in the year 800, the crown of the 
Western Empire from the hands of the Pope, it is probable 
that he felt himself to be less the vassal than the patron 
of that spiritual despot. He dictated to rather than lis- 
tened to the successor of Peter, and the reluctant Head of 
the Church was obliged to accept as substantial orthodoxy 
the politic decisions of a Frankish conqueror. The suc- 
cessors of Charlemagne paid apparent homage to the 
Papal seat. But its decrees and its authority were set at 
naught by their continual practice. 

It was in the latter half of the eleventh century that this 
royal indifference to the papal edicts had reached its 
height. In the bold enterprises and sanguinary struggles 
of that epoch, the mediation of Rome was not asked, and 



66 HILBEBBANB. 



its remonstrance was not heeded. William the Norman 
asked for no papal blessing, and feared no papal curse in 
his savage warfare upon the Saxons. The mountain 
knights of Spain were guided by other motives than 
Catholic zeal in driving back the Saracens from the homes, 
of their fathers. The indolent sovereign of France mur- 
mured quite audibly at the exactions of religion and justi- 
fied the refusal of his nobles to contribute to the needless 
expenses of the Church. It had become a question with 
the Emperor of Germany, most powerful of all the princes, 
whether his protection of the Church was worth its trouble 
and its cost. For his consent had been tacitly required in 
the confirmation of papal elections, and had been needful 
to make valid the choice of bishops. And this indiffer- 
ence to the dictation of Rome, so evident upon the throne, 
was propagated downward to the secular lords of less 
degree. The knight felt that he could interfere in the 
choice of his bishop, and if he had a friend to whom he 
wished to give so lucrative a place, he gave it without fear, 
and without inquiring into the religious fitness of his can- 
didate. The practice, called investiture, was general all 
over the Church. Its high officers were chosen by the 
influence of the secular power and from men of the world, 
without regard to their sanctity, and without their being 
compelled to pass the toilsome steps of the religious order. 
A bishop of the eleventh century was not of necessity a 
religious man. His capacity to fight was more esteemed 
than his gift in prayer, and he was expected to be more a 
boon companion than a spiritual guide. He who could 
drink longest at the evening wassail and could bring into 
the field the most armed retainers, was deemed by king 
and noble most fit as shepherd of souls. 

And this dependence of the bishop and priest upon the 
feudal lord had given rise throughout France and Germany 
to the sin of simony. This singular sin, which has played 
for centuries such a part in Roman Catholic discipline and 
development, and which to this day has a secret but ex- 
tensive working, derived its name from Simon the Sorcerer, 
who offered the Apostles money to impart to him the gift 
of the Holy Ghost. It consisted in the purchase of 
spiritual privileges and ecclesiastical holdings. But when 



HILDEBBAXD. 167 



it became a custom for the king or knight to appoint his 
religious rulers, then came in a competition for the favor 
of the king or knight. If these needed money they had 
only to put up to sale their spiritual offices ; and the 
highest bidder was installed accordingly vicar of God. 
The secular lord gained the means for his schemes of con- 
quest or pleasure in the contributions of his spiritual 
vassals. A judicious bribe became the prelate's talisman 
to favor and entrance fee to power. And when the higher 
offices became venal, the inferior offices became venal 
with them. The corrupt bishop who bought his own 
honor had no scruple in receiving back from his priest- 
hood what he had given to his lord. And ultimately this 
issued in the system of profitable absolutions, and he who 
paid most roundly for it, secured the easiest salvation for 
his soul. This venality of Church offices was greatly 
aggravated by the fears of the tenth century, when the 
near end of the earth drove such multitudes of the warlike 
and the profligate to the friendly shelter of the Church. 
It demoralized the clergy, lowered the standard of fitness, 
and made the ability to pay of more consideration than a 
heart renewed to God. It changed the Church from a 
censor of vice and crime to a partisan and tributary in all 
kinds of worldliness. The Church was expected to fur- 
nish, not rebukes, but subsidies to wickedness. The 
rulers of the State looked not for its condemnation, but 
for its contributions. 

And this dependence of the Church upon the State was 
still further increased by the violations of the law of celi- 
bacy, which were not only justified but encouraged by the 
civil power. It is difficult to discover in the history of the 
Church when the custom of celibacy was reckoned essen- 
tial to priestly holiness. From the very earliest time Paul 
had had, among the more devout, imitators in his practical 
abstinence from marriage, and his theory was praised by 
many who had not the self-denial to practice it. The in- 
fluence of the monastic spirit confirmed the Pauline preju- 
dice. When Jerome in the fourth century uttered his 
sarcasm upon the married ministers at the altar, he spoke 
the general sentiment of the Church. In the councils of the 
fifth century it was made a canon that he who could say 



1 68 HILDEBEAND. 



the mass must be free from all indulgence of fleshly 
lusts, and have no family cares to distract him from 
a single devotion to the Church and God. The 
Church was to be to him without a metaphor, his 
bride and spouse. The Canticles and the Apocalpyse 
interpreted his religious duty. But a canon of this kind 
could not hinder the natural instincts of men. The 
domestic was an earlier state than the monastic, and 
based more truly on human nature. And when the priest 
preferred the experience of comfort to the reputation of 
sanctity, and felt himself to be shielded by the favor of 
some secular protector, he entered readily into the bonds 
which the Church denounced as impure. In many parts 
of the empire the faithful were compelled to witness the 
daily scandal of the incarnate bread and wine in the im- 
pure hands of a man vowed to fleshly connections. If 
the marriage of the bishop would bring influence in its 
train, would bring the friends and funds of the bride, the 
noble was glad to encourage it. And the influence of the 
double connection became a motive in the choice of bishops. 
The married candidates had usually the largest facilities 
for bribery. Men of families applied for places in the 
Church to get rid of military duty. And it was churlish 
and cruel in them to leave their wives behind. Those 
who went into the Church from motives of policy would 
be troubled by no conscientious scruples, and they had no 
idea of suddenly becoming monks. But the reliance of 
the married priesthood was upon the State. The Church 
never looked upon the offence with approval or indiffer- 
ence. It saw in these domestic ties not only a violation of 
the Christian rule of purity, but what was worse, a weak- 
ening of the single attachment to the central power of the 
Church, a division of duties not wholesome to higher 
ecclesiastic interests. Remonstrances, loud and bitter, 
against the growing abuse were not wanting. Devotees 
from the cloister, and popes from the hall of spiritual 
dominion, protested and threatened. But in numberless 
instances priests were found willing to preserve their mar- 
riage bonds in this world at the risk of damnation in the 
next. If they put away their wives it was from motives of 
policy and not for conscience sake. 



HILVEBJRAXD. 169 



These abuses were already of long standing at the mid- 
dle of the eleventh century. But they had not been 
viewed with indifference in those places where the tradi- 
tions of early Christian purity were still kept alive. In 
many a Benedictine convent were prayers offered in the 
secret cell that God would restore again the lost estate of 
the Spirit to his worldly and subjugated Church. In many 
a pious heart did the wickedness of the priesthood revive 
the fear of a new destruction like that which fell upon 
Israel. But in one famous abbey there was a soul to 
contrive the restoration as well as a heart to lament the 
sin. In the cloisters of Clugny was conceived the plan of 
a new Roman Empire, to which kings should bow, and 
nations bring tribute, whose authority should be from God, 
and in which spiritual and not natural succession should 
be the order, which should jointly hold the sceptre of all 
earthly dominion, and the keys of all heavenly possessions. 

The name of Hildebrand the Tuscan had already be- 
come famous as the sign of a sanctity at once austere and 
unwearied, before it was associated with genius, ambition, 
and consummate and skillful daring. The Abbot of 
Clugny was looked up to with wonder as the model monk 
of a degenerate age.. But his destiny was higher than that 
of a simple convent ruler. And Providence soon brought 
in his way the means of fulfilling the tendencies of his 
nature and the plans of his soul. The ardent Catholic 
had long been disgusted by the arrogance of worldly 
powers, and shamed at the voluntary baseness of those 
who should be servants of God alone. He had seen with 
indignation creatures of the Emperor set in the Papal 
chair, and the office of holy Peter given over to bargain 
and vassalage. But he made no rash complaint, and 
waited the time which he foresaw was speedily approach- 
ing. He knew his strength, but he would not waste it. 
From youth till the middle age was reached he watched in 
his convent and prepared himself by the experience there 
for the burden of a harder rule. 

In the year 1048, Bruno, Bishop of Toul, in Germany, 
was chosen by the Emperor Henry III, to the vacant chair 
of the Papacy. As he journeyed towards Rome in splen- 
did attire, and with a gorgeous retinue, he found the gates 



170 HILDEBRAND. 



of the Abbey of Clugny opened wide for his hospitable 
reception and he entered there in lordly state, with the 
bearing of a prince. But when he left on his succeeding 
way it was in humble gray vesture, as a penitent without 
attendants, with bare feet, and in the garb of a pilgrim. 
For Hildebrand had shown him that the chief of the 
Church must be called by God and not chosen by the king, 
and that humility was a better preparation than pride for 
the office he was about to take. The adviser went up with 
the pilgrim bishop to the Holy City, and there the shouts 
that welcomed Pope Leo IX, as the sent of God to an 
afflicted people, were more a tribute to the skill of Hilde- 
brand than to the humility of his companion. The Abbot 
did not return to his convent, but stayed in Rome as a 
Cardinal and a priest, and became the adviser of the 
Papal government, as he had been the counsellor in the 
Papal election. 

The first period of Hildebrand's power and activity 
lasted precisely twenty-five years. In that time he had 
seen five popes raised to Peter's seat, and all of them by 
his omnipotent hand. He had drawn off bishops from 
their allegiance to the Empire ; as legate of the Church 
he had visited and judged the quarrels of the temporal 
and spiritual power ; and everywhere had gained the fame 
of a supernatural endowment. Men said that he could 
read the characters of all on whom his eyes might chance 
to fall ; that he could exorcise Satan from the heart of the 
offender, and could detect in the look of the culprit all 
sin against the Church. His warlike plans were supposed 
to be aided by legions of angels, and men fell down be- 
fore his frowning look and confessed their guilt. No 
subordinate priest had ever exercised such power. At his 
instance a council solemnly decreed that henceforward the 
College of Cardinals alone should choose the head of 
Christiandom, that on one side the Roman people were to 
resign forever their ancient right to choose their own 
bishop, and on the other the Emperor was to have no voice 
in the affair. The decree of that council still remains in 
force, and at the next election of Pope it was put in force 
when the nominee of the Empire was set aside,-and Alexan- 
der II was chosen by Hildebrand and the Cardinals. Blood 



BILDEBBAND. 17 1 



was shed on both sides before it could be settled which 
should be fixed as vicar of God. But the favor of heaven 
went with Alexander and his advisers. The twenty-five 
years which Hildebrand spent as the virtual minister of 
the Papal dominion was only a preparation for his more 
exalted office. 

In these years Hildebrand had successively ascended 
the several steps of Cardinal, Deacon, Archdeacon, Legate 
and Chancellor of the Church of Rome. Already more 
than once the Apostolic crown had been proffered to him, 
and he had put it aside. But now his time had come, and 
it was in the great Church of the Lateran, as the requiem 
died away over Alexander's body, that the shout of the 
multitude proclaimed as by a Divine voice that the former 
monk of Clugny was the Vicar of Christ upon earth. 
Scarcely had the shouts died away when the choice of the 
Cardinals was announced to have fallen upon the same 
illustrious person. There was the usual amount of appar- 
ent humility. The gestures of Hildebrand from the pulpit 
seemed to shun so momentuous a trust, but his voice was 
drowned in the acclamations. The mitre was put upon* 
his reluctant head, and when the sad pageant that had 
entered for a burial-service came out again it was to show 
Gregory VII, clad in his gorgeous Pontifical robes to an 
exultant people. Never had Pontiff been announced 
whom the suffrages of all admitted to be more natively fit 
for his station. His genius, his purity, his courage, his 
far-sighted wisdom, his single devotion to the cause of the 
Church even his enemies confessed. Not suddenly or by 
any usurpation could they reproach him with having se- 
cured the magnificent prize. But his life, already well 
prolonged, seemed a providential preparation for the place 
and for the place at that hour. No choice more obnoxious 
to the Emperor could have been made. He knew that 
the modest priest who solicited his approval of the trust 
which misfortune rather than desire, had compelled him 
to take, was in reality his most dangerous foe. But he 
dared not protest against such a choice. And the world 
heard with wonder and the Church with joy that Henry 
IV, of Germany, had approved the choice of a Pope 
whose whole soul was devoted to humble the Imperial 
power. 



172 HILDEBRAXD. 



Before proceeding to relate. the decisive struggle be- 
tween the Pope and the Empire, let us glance at the 
political condition of the German world, and the character 
of its principal ruler. The Emperor Henry III, at his 
dying, had left his infant son, the heir to the crown, to the 
guardianship of a mother too pious to be wise, and too 
pure to escape calumny. Her confidence was abused by 
priests and her credulity was despised by nobles. The 
flatteries of her ghostly advisers were not less pernicious 
than the outrages of her insolent courtiers who felt it an 
insult that a woman should sway the sceptre of the Caesars. 
It did not suit the plans of either party that the young 
prince should be brought up under such gentle and pure 
influences. Two powerful archbishops joined with two 
powerful dukes to separate the child from his mother, and 
to secure for themselves the spoils of his minority and the 
corruption of his growing years. It was at a boating 
party on the Rhine that the boy of twelve years was kid- 
napped by the strategem of this holy alliance, and severed 
,from his natural protector. Their lessons to him of de- 
bauchery, treachery, and cruelty, during his luxurious 
captivity he faithfully learned, but he learned to hate the 
teachers and remember their crime toward him. They 
were glad to escape the dark return which they saw ap- 
proaching by transferring the charge of their royal pupil 
to Adalbert, Archbishop: of Bremen, the Wolsey of the 
eleventh century. 

The life and spirit of this famous prelate has all the 
romantic interest of the life of him who made the vices of 
the English Henry the ministers of his own ambition. A 
great English writer has drawn his singular portrait, a 
composite of piety and profligacy, of learning and buf- 
foonery, of wit, and vanity, and intrigue, of military re- 
nown, and political skill, which had hardly a rival in his 
age, yet fond to absurdity of the emptiest titles and the 
vainest flatteries. The education of a king in the hands 
of such a man would prepare him for any career but that 
of a wise and prudent sovereign. He would learn the art 
of tyrannizing more than the principles of ruling. And 
Henry speedily showed by his wanton insults to the 
patriotic and religious sentiments of his people and his 



HILDEBRANI). 173 



utter indifference to private rights, in what school he had 
been trained. The grossest vices became not merely his 
practice but his boast. The wife that policy rather than 
affection had joined to him he treated brutally. And not 
all the influence of his handsome person and his liberal 
indulgence to every kind of vice could prevent the op- 
pressed citizens and the insulted Christians from following 
him with curses loud and deep. The curses were heard at 
Rome, and the successor of the Caesars was startled by a 
summons from the dying Alexander to appear in person at 
the Papal judgment to answer to the grave offences charged 
against him. Only faint traditions of a distant time re- 
corded a demand so daring and so preposterous. Henry 
was keen enough to detect the master-spirit in so bold an 
act. And when he heard that the ambitious Hildebrand 
sat in Peter's seat, he knew that the time had come for 
decisive contest. He knew that in the impending strife 
between himself and his rebellious vassals he must either 
submit to Rome or be crushed, that he could dictate no 
longer to the Holy See, but must find from this either pro- 
tection or enmity. The first as repulsive to his pride, as 
the last disastrous to his fortune. He affected to treat 
with contempt the Papal summons, but he trembled when 
he knew that the jealous eyes of the new Pontiff were 
watching his intrigues, and the listening ear was open to 
every tale of corruption. The first acts of Gregory told 
the Emperor that the time of compromise and bribery 
was over. 

Scarcely a month had passed from his accession as Pope 
when, at the suggestion of Gregory, a council was called 
at the Lateran to consider the serious and wide-spread 
profanation of a married priesthood. The deliberations 
were short, the action was prompt, positive, and rigorous. 
The decree went out that no sacred office should be cele- 
brated by any one bound in wedlock, and that wives must 
be sternly and forever repudiated by those who would 
stand at the altar. The decree was executed. The 
anathemas of Rome became the terrible weapon of fanatic 
monks in their denunciations. The lament of the sufferers 
proved unavailing. Gregory had no ear for any petitions. 
He wanted no words of remonstrance, but only deeds of 



1 7 4 HILDEBBAND. 



submission. It seemed merely a measure of priestly re- 
form, but it was in reality a blow aimed at the Imperial 
power. For it was the first step towards purging the 
Church of men who were merely retainers of the State. 
It was the married priesthood that fed the vice of simony, 
and purchased of the ruler his good-will and protection. 
And Henry saw that when this most glaring abuse was 
overthrown, warfare upon the rest could not be far behind. 
The decree of the Lateran became a law to the Church. 
Henceforth no choice lay open to the aspirant for holy 
orders. The servant of the Church ceased to know the 
meaning of home, and became a voluntary stranger to the 
strongest of all earthly ties. For eight hundred years 
now he who has been the depository of family secrets and 
the counsellor of the wife and husband, of young men and 
maidens in their most tender relations, has been sternly 
debarred from the experience of the joys and trials he 
has had confided to his ear. In his household no children 
have been angels to sport there, while living, and hover 
there when dead, and woman has been a menial only, 
and not a companion. Severed from family ties the priest 
had only his single duty to the Church and its orders. 

This first work of daring innovation accomplished, 
Gregory turned his attention next to the venality and cor- 
ruption of his priesthood. His legates went out into the 
various Catholic States to investigate the titles by which 
sacred offices were held, and to dictate to knights and 
sovereigns what should be their just relation, to the Church 
of God. The rulers of barbaric States were amazed to 
learn that they were merely viceroys of the Rome that 
their ancestors had ravaged, and that they were expected 
to give homage to the power from which once the tribute 
had been gathered. The people of France were informed 
that every house in the realm, from king to peasant, owed 
its penny to Peter, and that the priest should not buy from 
the prince, but should receive from the flock for the ser- 
vice of the Lord. It became the pleasing duty of the 
Papal messengers to administer oaths of allegiance to 
those who had exacted priestly tributes, and the king's son 
of Russia found it expedient in his visit to Rome to de- 
clare that he should hold his vast paternal realm under 



HILJJEBEAND. 175 



the protection of the Holy Church. The bishops learned 
that their contributions must no longer take a secular di- 
rection, that they were stewards merely of sacred revenues, 
and were to render the account only to him who was 
authorized to sanction their calling. Those whose elections 
were clearly corrupt were removed to make way for 
humbler men from the cloister, whose poverty and zeal 
were alike devoted to the service of the Catholic power. 
But the transfer of unconditional allegiance to the See of 
Rome was usually sufficient to allow the warlike ecclesiastic 
to keep his unsuitable place. Gregory foresaw that there 
was work to be done yet in the field as well as the cabinet. 
And the military habit of his priests was not entirely 
without value in his eyes. His aim was not so much to 
make the Church spiritual as to make it Catholic, and he 
was willing to employ the arms of the world if the issue 
should be in the glory of God. 

It was a critical time for the Emperor. He saw himself 
placed between two fires, each rapidly advancing and 
gaining strength in their rush. On one side were his re- 
bellious vassals, desperate under his multiplied outrages and 
oppressions, and ready to throw off a yoke as shameful and 
hateful as it was tyrannical and heavy. On the other, the 
stern, inexorable ambition of Rome, that looked steadily 
upon its end, and no human power could turn aside. On 
one side, revolt, on the other, the Gorgon eye of spiritual 
despotism. One or the other of these forces must be 
made his friend, else his destruction was inevitable. He 
chose that which would save his power, though it might 
humble his pride. But the choice was not made until he 
had been reduced to the last extremity, until his army had 
been defeated in repeated battles, and himself forced to 
flee by night from the castle in which he was beleagured. 
The fugitive then coveted the favor of the spiritual despots. 
He made fair promises to the Pope, which were repaid by 
gracious words and assurances of pardon and love. He 
gave some substantial offerings to the Pope which were 
not so well repaid. Milan, the Cathedral city of Northern 
Italy, where the sacred memory of Ambrose still lingered 
after the convulsions of seven cerfturies, was surrendered 
over to the Papal Charge, and distinct acknowledgments 



176 HILDEBRAND. 



of submission to the Holy See were volunteered. The 
vague and doubtful language of the Pope might be va- 
riously interpreted to the advantage of the Emperor or 
his foes. It was no more than a declaration of non-inter- 
vention, and though the loyal citizens of the Rhine pro- 
vinces understood it to justify their defence of the heredi- 
tary Sovereign, the Saxon insurgents with their newly 
chosen Emperor, found in it no command to lay down 
their arms or to submit to continued tyranny. The Pope 
had gained a city and a State and had humbled his rival, 
but he sent no force into the' field against Otho and his 
rebel hordes. 

The mortified Emperor found himself soon a second 
time at the mercy of his rebellious subjects, with the addi- 
tional element of his vassalage to a man that he hated. 
While he was forced to promise to the Saxon chiefs that 
their rights should be restored and the exactions of his 
soldiers no longer molest them, he was compelled to re- 
nounce all right to the election of priests or bishops, and 
to dismiss from his Court all who had obtained through 
simony ecclesiastical office. The eccentric bishop of 
Bremen was suspended from his See, and neither the shafts 
of his wit, nor the ebullitions of his rage, could move the 
stern determination of the Most Catholic Head of the 
Church. While the Emperor waited his time and medi- 
tated plans of sure revenge, the Pope improved his time 
to prepare for the fortune of the Emperor's defeat or vic- 
tory. 

On two great occasions in the year 1075, was the Te 
Deiim laudamus solemnly sung; at Worms, on the Rhine, 
the most loyal and most religious of cities, when to the 
arms of Henry and his allies, the insurgents had finally 
yielded and the bloody field of their recent conflict had 
been signally avenged ; and at Rome, when the second 
great Council of Gregory, the Pope had solemnly decreed 
that all spiritual authority resided with him who sat in the 
chair of Peter, that his was the sole power to establish 
dignities, and that no secular lord of whatever state or 
honor had any right to create or invest the servant of 
God. In the one instance, the solemn chant was only a 
service that the fortune of the next year might annul. In 



HILBEBEAND. *77 



the other, it announced an act of sovereignty that no wrath 
or rebellion could put back again. For the first time the 
edict of the magnates of the Church was recorded that it 
should have sway upon all principalities and powers, and 
that it was divinely commissioned to bind and loose in the 
policies of nations as well as the private salvation of men. 
The mass was sung, the record was made and committed 
to the Father of Christendom to use as he saw fit. In the 
hands of Hildebrand such an authority could not lie idle. 
The occasion for its use was near, and hardly had the 
winter of the year begun before the self-indulgent Em- 
peror of the West was startled from his dream of revenge 
and new spoiliation by a summons to appear at Rome and 
show cause why he should not be excommunicated and 
deposed for so man)'- crimes committed against the laws of 
God and the rights of the Church. Never since the 
sacrifice of Calvary, had so daring a command been ut- 
tered by a Christian priest. The world shuddered with 
fear and horror. The Church looked on with admiring 
awe. The great forces of the centuries, fully charged, 
had now reached their critical point. The thunderbolt, 



crashing fell, and its rolling echo filled with amazement 
the East and the West, arrested the Norman in his ravages, 
and startled the indolent Frank. No ruler was safe when 
such a summons might stop him in his course. 

But the amazement of this act of unprecedented daring 
was changed into horror at a still more sacrilegious at- 
tempt, when it was announced to the Church that an 
impious hand had sought to kill the High Priest of God, 
on the very birth-night of the Saviour of Men, and at the 
very moment of the sacred celebration, that the Pontiff of 
Christendom had been assaulted at the altar, his sacred 
blood shed upon the vestments of his office, his person out- 
raged, bound with cords, and dragged to captivity in his own 
castle. The heroic women who bound up his wounds, and 
the brave men who rescued him became suddenly Provi- 
dential angels in the eyes of the faithful, and the Church 
far and wide, rang with praises to God for his timely de- 
liverance, and muttered its curses upon the impious king 
whose weak vengeance, it was not doubted, had instigated 
so great a crime. The sympathy of the world was turned 

12 



178 HILBEBBANB. 



to the side which God seemed to protect, and the calm 
assurance with which the outraged Pontiff proceeded to 
solemn Christmas rites gave evidence that he was guided 
by an Almighty Power. 

The summons of Gregory to the Emperor to appear at 
Rome was answered by the vote of a Diet which the Em- 
peror convened at Worms. After enumerating a multitude 
of scandalous charges against the Pope, the truest of 
which was baseness of birth, for Hildebrand was a car- 
penter's son, like his Divine Master, and the most in- 
famous of which was that he worshipped the Devil, it was 
voted unanimously that no more allegiance was due to 
such a monster, that the oaths of obedience should be 
abjured, and that he should be deposed from the sacred 
seat which he had profaned. A long list of names were 
subscribed to this manifesto of Imperial defiance. Bishops 
who had been divorced from their wives, or deprived of 
their revenues, or subjected to mortifying penance, gladly 
signed this parchment of downfall to their oppressor. 
The names of knights and abbots, of prelates and profli- 
gates, were bound in a common league to overthrow this 
enemy of human rights and usurper of the Divine preroga- 
tive. An envoy was sent to Rome to bear this dark 
commission as the reply to Gregory's presumptuous de- 
mand. He reached the city in the midst of one of those 
majestic masses which had already become part of the 
solemn Lenten Fasts of the Church. Gregory was on his 
Pontifical throne, surrounded in the vast and splendid hall 
of the Vatican by the throng of priests and princes whom 
he had summoned to judge in the name of God the great- 
est of earthly kings. The sonorous mingling of choral 
voices was invoking the presence of the Most High in their 
deliberations. Since the memorable trial at Jerusalem 
some thousand years before, no such momentous judgment 
had been witnessed among men. It seemed to realize 
that predicted day when the great of the Earth should 
be arraigned before the bar of the final tribunal. In 
trembling wonder the assembled throng gazed upon that 
august being who seemed to wield before them the swift 
sentence of God. 

The throne of St. Peter became now in its awful ma- 



HILBEBBANB. 179 



jesty as the very judgment-seat of the Eternal. All the 
authority of heaven and earth seemed embodied in that 
emaciated form and that flashing eye. The envoy entered. 
His manner was insolent, his words were few. He spoke 
to the Pope, that it was the will of the Emperor and the 
Italian and German bishops that he should descend from 
his usurped dignity. He spoke to the vast assembly that 
the Emperor commanded them at the approaching Whit- 
sunday to receive a lawful spiritual father from his hands. 
"Your pretended Pope," said he, "is only a ravenous 
wolf." Amid the shouts of rage that greeted the audacious 
harangue, and the gleaming swords that were raised to 
smite down the intruder, Gregory descended from his 
throne, took the missives from the envoy's hand and then 
calmly read before them the sentence which the Imperial 
synods had pronounced. In words of eloquent persua- 
sion he urged them to refrain from violence in the fulfil- 
ment of that duty which the fortune of the time and the 
Providence of God had imposed upon them. He im- 
plored, by significant gestures, the piety of the Catholic 
to endure the humiliation of the mother, for Agnes, the 
Empress, sat by his side. And then, when he had raised 
their feelings to the needful point of awe and filled their 
minds with majestic thoughts of duty to God, he proceeded 
to invoke with a voice clear and strong, and terrible as 
that of Michael the Archangel, " the holy Peter, prince of 
the Apostles, and Mary the Mother of God, and the 
blessed Paul and all the saints to bear witness, while for 
the honor and defence of Christ's Church, in the name of 
the Holy Trinity, by the power and authority of Peter," 
he interdicted to King Henry, son of Henry the Emperor, 
the government of the whole realm of Germany and 
Italy, absolving all Christians from their allegiance, and 
declaring him anathema, accursed, " that the nations may 
know and acknowledge that thou art Peter, and that upon 
this rock the Son of the living God hath built his Church 
and that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." 

We might here rest our sketch of Gregory and his in- 
fluence, since here the culminating point of Papal claims 
and Papal daring was reached. No step could be taken 
now but that which should seek to make war upon heaven 



180 EILDEBRAND. 



and to subjugate God. Now first in a way to alarm the 
nations and to exhibit the reality of Roman dominion was 
the promise of Christ to Peter claimed by his successor. 
In a thousand years from the time when the Galilean 
fisherman suffered death for setting forth strange gods to 
disturb the faith of the world, had the God that he de- 
clared announced his temporal kingdom and indicated his 
viceroy. Now the thrones of the world had become as 
the footstool of Christ. The millennial sovereignty was 
perfected, and the dream of monks for ages, the far-off 
prophecies of Jewish seers, the desire of all the holy, the 
songs of angels at Bethlehem, the ancient covenants with 
Moses, and Abraham, and Noah, seemed all fulfilled. 
Now the mountain of Jehovah was lifted in the top of the 
mountains, the city of Universal Empire was restored 
again, and the High Priest was the grand mediator be- 
tween God and man. Now the Christian virtues seemed 
to have their sufficient work, the Beatitudes were inter- 
preted, to the meek the earth was given, and the persecuted 
for righteousness' sake enjoyed the foretaste of their inher- 
itance. Now the symbol of the lion and the lamb led 
together by the little child, was explained, and the highest 
meaning of the gift to cast out demons and possess the 
world was opened. Now the infallible truth and sanctity 
of the Holy Seat seemed to be vindicated, and no earthly 
power should presume to guide or to govern the decisions 
of Christ's Church upon earth. The declarations of all 
previous Councils sink into insignificance beside the 
grandeur of this one. 

But we will follow yet a little farther the triumph of 
Gregory, and behold the sovereign of the world in deeper 
humiliation before his haughty rival. It was on his return 
from a marauding expedition into Saxony, flushed with 
the spoils and glory of vindictive pillage, that Henry 
learned the awful sentence which had gone out against 
him. He saw the loyal reverence of his people changed 
into suspicion and aversion. One by one the nobles that 
had sustained him fell away. His army dwindled to a 
body-guard. Friendship, and kindred, and gratitude, all 
seemed to wither before the curse of God. The impious 
bishops whom he suborned to utter their feeble excommu- 



UILBEBRAND. 181 



nication against the successor of Peter, were snatched 
away one by one by the speedy Divine judgments, as the 
people deemed them, and in an incredibly short period 
from the great Roman assembly, the Emperor of the West 
found himself shunned, despised, and forsaken, an alien 
in his father's house, and an apostate to all the faithful. 
A Diet was summoned to choose in his place an Emperor 
who should be worthy of human love and the divine 
blessing. It met at Tribur at the close of the year. From 
all parts of the land the call of Gregory summoned the 
princes to the solemn election. In vain did the desperate 
monarch sue for favor. His proposal to resign the actual 
and retain only the nominal dignity was treated as a cheat 
and a snare. And the decree went forth that if the twenty- 
third of February in the next year found Henry still with- 
out the pale of Catholic communion, another should be 
chosen to take his office. It was a decree to please the 
proud heart of the Pontiff, for now he might see not alone 
his own authority established, but also the humiliation of 
his enemy. He might not only launch the anathemas of 
the Church against the offending State, but might literally 
•set his foot upon the neck of his rival. 

Henry was but twenty-five years old when the sentence 
of this Diet consigned him to a brief exile at Spires, to enjoy 
for a few weeks the empty honor of an Imperial name, 
without soldiers, courtiers, or priests. The time was short. 
He knew that there was no hope for him if he stayed 
there, and he resolved, with a heroism worthy of his an- 
cestry, to make a personal appeal to the stony heart of the 
merciless Pontiff. In the dead of winter, with no attend- 
ant but his faithful wife, faithful in spite of his insults and 
wickedness, and their infant child, scantily clad, he crossed 
the high ranges of the Alps, encountering the most fearful 
clangers, and suffering unheard-of hardships from cold, 
fatigue, and hunger, and the cruelty of those whose rever- 
ence for the Church had extinguished all compassion for 
the outcast. The short interval of hope and joy that the 
loyal greetings of his Italian States, where the Pope was 
equally hated and feared, was soon changed to darker 
despair as he heard that the Supreme Vicar of Christ 
refused to see him in any garb but that of the most lowly 



182 HILDEBRAND. 



penitence. His royal offers all were spurned. It was 
not for an accused man to make proposals, but to submit 
himself meekly to the Holy See. The Pope could not 
treat with so great an offender ; he could only give him 
pardon and absolution if he should prove himself worthy 
of it. 

It was at the fortress of Canossa, in the Apennines, 
belonging to the most Catholic, as well as the most learned 
and accomplished Matilda, Countess of Tuscany, that the 
Head of the Church waited for the complete enjoyment 
of his triumph. In the cold month of January when the 
streams were frozen and trees were bare, could be seen 
from the walls of the fortress, for three days a kneeling 
form with robe of thin white linen and naked feet, waiting 
at the gate, hungry and emaciated, wailing at the gate 
which did not open. Multitudes looked on and many 
hearts were moved, but none dared to protest, for they 
felt that this was not the cruelty of man, but the retribu- 
tion of God. On the fourth day the penitent was admitted 
into the sacred presence. And now for the first time 
since the struggle began, did the majesty of earth and 
heaven meet face to face in their representatives. The 
tall and noble form of the youthful Henry was prostrate 
before the shrunken frame of the aged monk. Tears of 
agony and shame poured from the eyes of the one, the 
Hash of triumph and vengeance gleamed from the eye of 
the other. Who may conceive the tumultuous emotions in 
that haughty soul as he beheld before the unarmed servant 
of Christ the head of all earthly potentates kneeling and 
praying ? What exultation, as one by one, the penitent 
declared his consent to every act of aggression or insult 
that had come from the Church of God upon his crown, 
acknowledged his own baseness, consented to the com- 
plete supremacy of his Holy Father, to hold all goods and 
lands, and titles, at the bidding and pleasure of his 
spiritual master, to defend every papal claim, to obey 
every papal command, and to enforce by word, and by 
sword every papal decree ! What grateful and malignant 
joy, when by a solemn and terrible oath, Henry and his 
friends as sponsors for him, bound themselves under 
penalty of forfeiture of right in this world and of salva- 



HILDEBRAND. 183 



tion in the next, to maintain forever obedience absolute 
and unconditional to the Catholic faith. What daring 
confidence as he offered to the reluctant and awe-stricken 
Emperor the sacred bread of sacrifice. Hear the narra- 
tion of this act by an impartial biographer. " When the 
oaths of the assembled bishops and princes had been taken, 
the Pontiff gave to the Emperor his Apostolic blessing, 
and celebrated the mass. Then, beckoning him to the 
altar with his assistants, and holding in his hand the con- 
secrated wafer, Gregory thus addressed him : 

" For a long time have I received letters from you and 
your partisans, in which you accuse me of having usurped 
the Holy Seat by corruption and of having committed 
both before and since my installation, crimes which would 
have excluded me, according to the canons, from entrance 
to the sacred office. I might justify myself by the wit- 
ness of those who have known me from childhood, and 
who chose me to this place. But to take away all scandal 
I turn to the judgment of God alone. Let this body of 
Jesus Christ the Lord, that now I eat, be proof of my 
innocence. Let the Almighty strike me dead now, if I 
am guilty of these crimes." He ate, and paused till the 
joyful cries of the throng had ceased. Then turning to 
Henry again, he thus went on, in a tone of sarcastic com- 
passion : " My son, the German princes have never ceased 
to accuse you to me of crimes which they declare to render 
you unworthy not only of royal functions, but of religious 
communion and of social life. They demand your instant 
judgment. You know how uncertain are human judgments. 
Try now, after me, this divine decision. Take now this 
other portion of the sacred body of Christ, and prove here 
your innocence by eating it in this presence. Then will 
you remove all scandal from your name, will show that 
you have been calumniated, and will make of me and of 
God your ally." The king dared not meet such a trial. 
His audacity forsook him. He had just been by penance 
and fasting confessing his guilt and how should he invoke 
the witness of God to a lie. This was fit closing to such 
an extraordinary scene. The annals of the world furnish 
nothing more complete in the romance of its sublimity. 
Gregory might well as the sun went down that day, as his 



184 HILDEBRAND. 



long strife was thus so gloriously crowned, have used the 
words of aged Simeon, though in a different spirit, " Lord, 
now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes 
have seen thy salvation." 

We may close at this point our sketch of Hildebrand 
and his influence in the Catholic Church, for here is ac- 
complished that great work of spiritual subjugation of the 
temporal power, which the ages had been slowly preparing. 
The subsequent fortunes of Gregory and Henry, gradual 
reaction in favor of the royal penitent against the priestly 
despot, the shifts to which the Vicar of Christ was reduced 
to sustain his daring claim, the mingled heroism and mis- 
fortune of his later years, his flight from Rome, and his 
anguish at the pillage and ruin of that city by the Norman 
hordes, the dignity of his bearing in exile, and the firmness 
of his death, might all be incorporated into a narrative 
equally touching and instructive. Nor have we space here 
to draw the character of this greatest of all the Popes 
since Leo established the supremacy of Peter's seat above 
all patriarchs and bishops, or to show how far the elements 
of intrigue, fanaticism and ambition were mingled with his 
zeal for the service and authority of the Church of God. 
The talent, the sincerity, the energy, the piety of Hilde- 
brand his bitterest enemies have never doubted. His was 
no vulgar or selfish ambition, and no nobler vision than 
that he longed to realize and establish, ever passed before 
priest or prophet. Many had dreams of the future glory 
of the Church. Hildebrand made it present. Many had 
prayed in cloisters and cathedrals that corruptions might 
cease to pollute the Christian altar. He took the fan in 
his hand and purged them away. His gigantic plan was 
wide as the circuit of his dominion. He brought the 
nations into harmony with the spiritual systems, and made 
the greater orbs of empires fulfill their orderly circuits 
with the lesser lights of the Church. He found the Church 
a satellite to the State ; he left it in the centre. From him 
the second age of the Catholic power may be reckoned. 
Henceforth the strong Apostle becomes the Rock of the 
State as well as the Church, the minister of right among 
men as well as pardon from God. 



ABELARD. 185 



VII. 

ABELARD AND HIS AGE. 

The sympathies of the human heart go always with 
reform and progress. Conservatism may enthrall the 
reason of men, but it cannot captivate their deeper senti- 
ments. We may admire the wisdom, we may respect the 
prudence, we may reverence the sanctity of him who would 
keep all things in their place, and preserve the old land- 
marks, but the soul within us goes with him who dares to 
prove all things. We may obey the priest in the temple, 
but we are quickened by the prophet in the market-place. 
For judgment and counsel we go to the men of statutes 
and precedents, who interpret the past, and defend the 
recognized faith. For inspiration and joy we go to the 
men who declare the future and open the long-neglected 
truth. We sit at the feet of Gamaliel, but we shout and 
weep, and burn with Paul. The conservative spirit cannot 
kindle enthusiasm. It is always calm and cool. Its ex- 
citements are forced and insincere. It uses the dialect 
sometimes of the heart, but it is secretly ashamed of bor- 
rowing what is not congenial to it. It belongs to logic, 
but not to intuition. It grows as an exotic in the soul, by 
diligent training; it will not spring up there. There are 
very few conservatives by nature. Men become so by 
contact with the world, by observation of its changes, by 
experience of its needs, by what reason proves to them. 
The radical changes to the conservative as the fire of youth 
dies out, and prudence comes in, in her homely and sober 
garb. And the sympathy which men of middle or declin- 
ing life pretend to feel with conservative views comes from 
community of opinion more than community of soul. It 
is agreement more than it is union. 

But with progress we have a secret sympathy, even where 
the judgment cannot approve. The heart of the world 



1 86 ABEL ABB. 



justifies the reformer, even while its voice cries "crucify 
him." There is a thrill which the bold announcement of 
new truth gives that all the pictures of the past cannot 
awaken. He is our hero who leads us, not he who rules 
us. The general is always more popular than the states- 
man, as the experience of our land has abundantly proved. 
He who opens a new field of adventure, conquers new 
kingdoms, enlarges our borders, has a stronger hold on 
the popular heart than he who merely goes round and 
fences in and describes what we have. And this is just 
as true in the realm of thought as of action. The men 
whom the heart of the world canonizes are the men who 
have added by their genius, their valor, their conjecture, 
something to the world, who have told something new ; 
such men as Faust, Galileo, Newton and Fulton ; in a high 
sphere such men as Luther, George Fox, Swedenborg 
and Channing. These belong to the Pantheon of the 
race, and will live long after the relics of Catholic saints 
have ceased in their efficacy. The heart of the world 
goes so strongly with the reformer that it will pardon in 
him many defects, passion, prejudice, malice, even profli- 
gacy. It requires of the conservative that he shall have 
weight of character to atone for his want of zeal, that he 
shall show a life good enough to keep men where he stands, 
that he shall show in his own case the thing already at- 
tained to be sufficient for righteousness and honor. A 
wicked conservative goes down quickest of all men to 
oblivion. He has nothing to save him, to hold his life 
either to the reason or the love of the world. One age 
will darken and annul all his reputation. But the private 
sins of the reformer, which cloud his glory to-day are for- 
gotten often as time goes on, and his bold prophecy comes 
true. 

This general view is illustrated in the case of two emi- 
nent men of the twelfth century. There was everything 
in the life of Bernard to kindle a love for him personally. 
He was pure, zealous, and self-denying, a far holier man 
than his great rival, and yet we are conscious of a different 
feeling in reading the life of Abelard. There is more to 
lament, more to despise, yet more to inspire us. We feel 
that with all his misfortunes, this was the more successful ; 



ABEL ABB. 187 



with all his sins, this was the man more divinely taught. 
The life of Bernard was pure, but its direction was wrong. 
It tended to cruelty, darkness and stagnant faith. The 
life of Abelard had weakness and frailties, but its direction 
was onward. It tended to freedom, light, and living truth. 
The one was like the setting sun in a clear sky, making 
the wide earth beautiful with long crimson rays, but drop- 
ping into night ; the other like the morning sun rising 
through clouds and mists, faintly seen at first, but breaking 
to create the day. We may tell all the story of one, with 
no apologetic tone. Yet we shall fail to arouse emotion in 
the hearts of the hearers. They will listen with interest ; 
but will feel that there is something wanting. For the 
other we must apologize all along, yet his life cannot be 
rehearsed without giving him a place in our love. If I 
should not succeed now in awakening your sympathy for 
the name and work of Abelard it will be the fault of the 
description and not of the theme. If this short sketch of 
the prophet of reason prove dry to you, you can go to the 
romances that have been written around his name, and 
find the true fire in what the genius of modern France has 
done to vindicate his glory. 

In the village of Pallet, in one of the Loire provinces of 
France, one notices an old stone cross in the centre of a 
deserted cemetery. On this spot stood in the time of 
Philip I, a conspicuous castle, inhabited by Berenger, one 
of the nobles of the Court. The man is known to us now 
by the fame of his eldest son. The place is memorable as 
the birth-place of Abelard in 1079. Quite different from 
the domestic training of Bernard was the education of the 
young Peter. To prepare him well for a warlike career, 
his father brought to him all the advantages of scholastic 
training that the age could furnish. The manuscripts and 
the masters of science and letters were alike opened to his 
desire. The boy speedily surprised his parents and his 



teachers. An insatiable thirst for knowledge revealed 
itself, a boundless capacity appeared. In a little while he 
found that he could learn no more by staying at home. 
He could vanquish the elders there in argument, and he 
had exhausted all their learning. He resolved to devote 
himself wholly to letters, to resign his baronial heritage, and 



1 88 ABELARD. 



to travel as a knight errant of philosophy. Such an adven- 
ture was not new, but in his case it was attended with 
many strange experiences. In place of combats with the 
lance, would he hold with antagonists by the way-side 
combats with the tongue, and leave them fairly at their 
wits' end. All over the country he went, seeking out the 
most famous disputers, learning from them where they 
would teach him, wrangling with them where they would 
argue with him, and never yielding till he had vanquished 
them. Controversy was his delight, and no question was 
so intricate, so mystical, or so high, that he did not plunge 
into it. The problem of free grace or the Trinity did not 
frighten him more than some jesting proposal. 

In this wandering life, the young Peter fell in with many 
of the most renowned doctors, among others with the 
famous Roscelin, the champion of Nominalism, who was 
silenced by a Council in the year 1092. The young 
student pronounced the arguments of the great doctor 
ridiculous, though he was influenced by his general views. 
At the age of twenty he came for the first time in his life 
to Paris. This city had already become the Athens of 
the Middle Ages, alike for the magnificence of its art and 
the literary fame of its schools and cloisters. The school 
of Our Lady was the central spot of science to the West- 
ern World. The youth from Britain, from Spain, and 
from Italy came there to learn the laws of mind and the 
rules of speech. The head of the school, who was also 
Archdeacon of Paris, had the double repute of being the 
best hand at the trencher and the most cunning master of 
logic that the Church, in which both these classes 
abounded, could furnish. Epicurus and Aristotle shared 
in his life the empire of Christ. His social qualities grace- 
fully set off his intellectual gifts. To him and his school 
Peter turned as by natural instinct. Almost at once he 
became the favorite scholar. William saw in him a pupil 
who could understand, remember, and use the lessons 
which he received. His fellow-pupils too could not help 
admiring him while they envied. They were captivated 
by his beauty, they were dazzled by his flow of brilliant 
words, they were silenced by his rapid and subtle plead- 
ings, and in a little time none remained to dispute with 



ABELARD. 189 

him but the master. The contest did not frighten him, but 
the veteran was amazed to hear this stripling boldly ques- 
tioning his doctrines and exposing before the crowd of 
students their weakness or falsehood. The friendship 
which he felt, was soon changed to jealousy and fear. 

The division of studies in the Middle Ages was into 
the Trivium and the Quadrivium. The first which was 
authorized by the Church comprehended the three branches 
of Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic ; the second, which was 
less popular, and to some quite forbidden, comprehended 
the four branches of Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, 
and Music. It was Peter's ambition to be master of all 
together, and while he attended the sessions of the canon- 
ical school and wrangled with William there, he took 
private lessons in the mathematics of a certain obscure 
but skillful teacher. He was not satisfied with his progress 
in this, and declared that nature had deprived him of the 
gift of computing numbers. It was a coarse joke which 
his teacher made about his superficial study, that gave him 
the surname of Abelard, which he ever afterwards bore. 
When his fame was established, this surname was derived 
from a French word meaning bee, and was taken as 
symbolical of his industry, sweetness, and power to sting. 

Abelard could not rest long in the humble position of a 
learner. He longed to teach and to rule, and he proclaimed 
his purpose of establishing at Melun, a royal city, a rival 
school to that in Paris. In spite of jealousies and in- 
trigues, in which his master was not ashamed to share, he 
carried his point, and at the age of twenty-two, the son of 
Berenger announced himself to the world as a teacher of 
all the sciences and ready to maintain his ground with the 
wisest. But this first experiment was soon put to an end 
by the breaking health of the young doctor, and he was 
obliged to leave the renown he had gained and the com- 
pany that he had gathered, to seek strength and renewal 
on the shores of his native province. 

Some years now passed of travel and various study. 
But the tidings which he heard in the year 11 08, that his 
old master had retired from the school in Paris to become 
the abbot of a neighboring convent, brought Abelard to 
Paris again. The passage of time had matured his powers, 



190 ABEL ABB. 



and now he seemed to be a fitter match for the man whom 
his questions had before insulted. William was a zealous 
Realist. He believed in the fullest manner that ideas 
were realities, that names were things, that man existed as 
much as men, that universals were as positive beings as 
particulars. To him there were no common or abstract 
names. The essence of the whole entered into every part. 
The abstract sheep or horse was to be found in each 
separate individual of the species, yet had an independent 
life of its own. Abelard had early leaned to the Nominal- 
ist view, and his reason seemed to justify his early teach- 
ing. He brought up arguments against the views of 
William, which showed how sophistical and ridiculous this 
was. "If the race," said he, "is the essence of the in- 
dividual, if man is an essence entire in every man, and 
the special person is only an accident, it follows that this 
essence is at the same time entire in every man at once, 
that when Socrates is at Athens and Cicero at Rome, it is 
all with Socrates in one place and all with Cicero in the 
other. In like manner, the universal man, being the 
essence of the particular, is the particular man, and carries 
the particular with him. So that when he is at Rome with 
Cicero, Socrates must be there too, and when he is at 
Athens with Socrates, Cicero must be there. In other 
words, that Socrates and Cicero must be in the same place, 
in one another, identical, in fact, with one another. 

The contest between Nominalism and Realism was at- 
tended by all the passion and hatred which mark con- 
troversy everywhere. There is no humiliation more galling 
to a teacher than to have the weakness of his doctrine ex- 
posed, and though the tables were so thoroughly turned 
that William found it necessary to nominate Abelard to 
his vacant chair in the school of Paris, and to become 
even one of his auditors, he did not learn to love the man 
who had supplanted him. It was not pleasant to listen 
meekly to the words of his former pupil. He made up by 
slanders what he could not accomplish by pleading. 
He suborned false witnesses against the character of 
Abelard, and at one time drove the great teacher from his 
place. But a new school, founded on Mt. St. Genevieve, 
spread more widely his renown. His enemies were awed 



ABELARD. 191 



by his daring and confounded by his eloquence. A young 
monk, who was set on to encounter the giant, as David went 
out to Goliah, found victory here not so easy. Abelard's 
course was steadily upward. One by one his enemies 
were silenced. William of Champeaux went off to die in 
a distant convent. No new doctor arose to dispute with 
Abelard the palm. He taught everything, and except in the- 
ology, was admitted to be perfect in everything. He was 
a dictator. in the republic of letters. He had read all the 
known works of ancient lore, be could repeat from any of 
the fathers of philosophy, he could endure the schoolmen, 
and he gloried in the arguments of the Greek wise men. 
Philosophy was his chief delight. Aristotle was his master, 
and his highest skill was vised in interpreting the Stagirite 
to the crowd of students from all lands who surrounded 
him. Plato he eulogised, but Aristotle he quoted and 
leaned upon. The dry categories of this master he could 
enliven by fine illustrations from the Latin poets, Horace, 
Ovid, and Virgil, and open the mysteries of the Greek to 
the clear vision of the Middle Age students. At the age 
of thirty-four Abelard was confessed the finest scholar and 
the greatest teacher of the civilized world. That same 
year a young Cistercian monk was planting in Clairvaux 
his famous convent. 

The pride and arrogance of Abelard grew with his suc- 
cess. There was no rival for him in dialectics, but there 
was one science which he did not pretend to teach. He 
had not profanely ventured upon the forbidden ground of 
theology. This was the province of monks and priests, 
and Abelard had yet no attraction to the religious life. 
The master in this science in France was Anselm of Laon, 
a namesake and a pupil of the great Archbishop of Can- 
terbury. He taught in Paris for a while, but afterwards 
retired to Laon, where for many years he had expounded 
theology to great throngs of students. Abelard heard of 
his fame and determined to try for himself if it were in- 
vincible. He went to Laon. But the famous teachings of 
Anselm seemed to him thin and merely showy, a fine tree, 
with nothing but leaves on it. " When he lighted his fire," 
says Abelard, "he made smoke enough, but no light." He 
could not bear very long to sit under this man's shadow. 



192 ABELABD. 

He became negligent at the lectures, and showed visibly 
his contempt both for the teacher and the doctrine. The 
pupils of Anselm were mortified and annoyed that so young 
a man should treat in such a way a great divine. One of 
them asked him one day jestingly what he who had only 
studied natural science thought about the divine science. 
He answered that he knew no science better than that 
which taught how to save the soul ; but that he wondered 
much that intelligent men could not understand the 
Father from their own writings without any master. They 
laughed at him and defied him to show what he com- 
mended. He agreed to the trial. "Show me," said he, 
" the hardest passage of your Scriptures." The book of 
Ezekiel was handed to him, which passed for the darkest 
of Holy Writ. Abelard accepted it, and appointed the 
next morning for his lesson of interpreting the book. 
They remonstrated with him for taking so short a time, 
plead his inexperience, the greatness of the task and the 
amount of research required, to induce him to delay. " I 
am not used," said he, "to follow custom, but to obey my 
own genius." He added that he would break the agree- 
ment if they did not come at the time appointed. They 
came, expecting failure from the foolish rashness. How 
could such a tyro interpret in a day what took long years 
of study for gray-haired wisdom to accomplish ! But they 
were first amazed, then captivated, and then inspired. 
They crowded around him to make him write down his 
words. They wrote them again from his copy. They 
made him their teacher in place of Anselm. And the 
wrathful Archdeacon could only be dumb at such strange 
effrontery. He returned to Paris the recognized master 
in the greatest of human sciences, and the schools of the 
Church now welcomed and craved his lessons. He rose 
too high for envy. The picture of his influence at this 
period when he taught in the Cite in a house still standing, 
which tradition points out, is very graphic. " In the broad 
shadow of five churches and the cathedral, among sombre 
cloisters, in vast halls, on the turf of the court-yards, 
moved around the sacred tribe, who seemed to live for 
science and faith, and were pressed alike by the lust of 
power and the love of controversy. By the side and be 



ABELAED. 193 

neath the watch sometimes jealous, often feeble, of the 
priests, was stirring continually this population of students 
of all ranks, of all callings, of all races, of all countries, 
which the European fame of the Parisian school had 
drawn together. In this school, in the midst of this at- 
tentive and obedient nation, was seen often passing a man 
of broad forehead, bold and lively glance, noble gait, 
whose beauty had not lost its youthful bloom, while it 
bore the marked features and the browner tint of complete 
manhood. His sober but careful dress, the severe elegance 
of his person, the simple grace of his manners, now 
affable, and now lofty, that imposing, but easy attitude, 
and that indolent negligence which shows the confidence 
of success and the habit of command, the respectful bear- 
ing of his attendants, proud towards all but him, the 
curious eagerness of the crowd who fell back to make 
room while they pressed around, when he went or returned 
to his dwelling, with his disciples still excited by the words 
of his teaching, all announced a master, most powerful in 
the hall, most dear in the city, most illustrious in the world. 
Everywhere men talked of him. From the most distant 
countries men thronged to hear him. Rome even sent her 
auditors. The rabble of the streets stopped to look at 
him as he passed, householders came down to the thres- 
holds of their doors, and women drew back the curtain 
from the pane of their little window. Paris had adopted 
him as her son, had taken him for her jewel and her 
torch." 

It was a proud and splendid position. We cannot won- 
der that one who stood in the centre of such triumphs and 
such applause, should deem himself almost a divine man. 
There was nothing on earth for him to envy. He looked 
around and could discover no one wiser, or more popular, 
or more powerful over the minds of men than he. Free 
to inquire, he was also free to proclaim truth. He could 
venture to differ from doctors, could claim even when 
priests were by, to speak with the authority of an Apostle. 
Wealth rolled in upon him from the five thousand students 
who would pay any price for the privilege of hearing such 
a master. He seemed to have reached a secure and im- 
pregnable eminence, whence nothing but his own will 
13 



194 ABELARD. 



could draw him clown. But his reign was short. For the 
passion which Bernard was careful so early to extinguish, 
drew down the great teacher in the maturity of his years. 
When Abelard stooped to love, then he ceased to rule. 

Had I time to relate here the story of the loves of 
Heloise and Abelard, this would not be the place to do so. 
It is a story romantic as any of the knight-errant adven- 
tures. There is a beauty about it that fascinates, a pathos 
that moves, and a tragedy that repels the reader. More 
than one tragic story has told us what danger there is to 
the heart of the master when the pupil is young, accom- 
plished, pure, and beautiful. But we must pass over the 
whole detail of passion, infatuation, disgrace, and remorse, 
those hours of high communion, mistaken for inspiration, 
but felt to be bliss, that clandestine marriage, of which 
the clear eye of Heloise saw the sure misfortune and the 
bitter fruit, the terrible revenge that was taken, the shame 
and despair that made of the man a monk and the woman 
a nun forever. All this seems like an episode in the life 
of Abelard, like a long and troubled dream, now sweet, 
now sad, now startling. And yet this episode is the seal 
of Abelard's immortal fame. For the world knows him 
now as his name is joined to the softer name. Their 
letters are read together as models of what a tender and 
beautiful correspondence should be, and their names are 
inscribed together on the chief stone of pilgrimage in the 
chief burial-place of Europe. 

To the great Abbey of St. Denis went the wretched 
Abelard, in the fortieth year of his age, to bewail in silence 
his broken heart and his sad destiny. But misfortune had 
not yet crushed out of the man his native spirit. He was 
fated to live nowhere in peace. The scandalous life of the 
monks aroused his wrath and he felt moved to rebuke the 
powers above him. The issue was, that he became a 
nuisance in the convent, and his brethren to get rid of him 
there, urged him to take up again the work of teacher, 
which he believed himself to have forsaken forever. Sadly 
he was forced to consent, and the poor monk could see with 
pride that though the world had heard widely of his shame, 
it had not forgotten his power. Three thousand students 
came at the opening of his school. The establishments 



ABELARD. 195 



around began to wane. Now envy and hatred began to 
have their way, for it was no longer the great scholar 
whom the Church and State protected, but a mean private 
man who was setting himself up as a master in theology. 
The storm rose around him. He was accused of heresy, 
of arrogance, and of blasphemy, of profaning by worldly 
science the truth of God, of setting philosophy above 
faith. They told how he placed the Grecian sages on a 
level with the Christian saints, and held that the philoso- 
phers of heathenism might be saved as well as the disciples 
of Christ, how he dared even to discuss the ineffable 
Trinity, and to reason into abstract attributes the persons 
of Father, Son and Spirit. The cry was loud, the warfare 
was vigorous. The old spirit of Abelard was roused at 
first and for a little while he braved the storm. He 
met their charges of sophistry by a challenge to argument, 
he flung back sarcasm against their abuse, referring to the 
old fable of the fox and grapes, when they spoke of the 
.worthlessness of his science. But his argument had no 
weight upon minds so prejudiced, and his sarcasm only 
stung them to madness. His profession of orthodoxy 
could not quiet the excitement. He was summoned before 
a council at Soissons to defend his views, to hear his sen- 
tence. It was an imposing spectacle. The great men of 
the French Church were all assembled, and the legate of 
the Pope was there. It was a new position for Abelard to 
be placed in. He saw enemies all around him, himself 
shunned as a denier of God, and doomed as a foe to the 
truth. He was accused of denying the Trinity. He 
showed by extracts from his writings that he had asserted 
it with vigor, had sustained the opinions of the wisest 
Church fathers, of Origen, of Augustine, even of Athana- 
sius, and that he had kept close too to the terms of Scrip- 
ture. But the crowning sin was not that he had reasoned 
about it unjustly, but that he had reasoned at all. His 
persuasive eloquence, which had captivated and well nigh 
converted some prominent members of the council, was 
overruled by the majority of voices ; he was condemned 
to throw his own book into the flames. 

This closing scene of the council, as it is described, 
seems almost ludicrous. "While Abelard sadly, looked 



*9 6 ABELABD. 



on upon his burning roll, the silence of the judges was 
suddenly broken, and one of the most hostile said in an 
undertone that he had read somewhere that God the 
Father was alone omnipotent." Amazed, the legate ex- 
claimed, "I cannot believe it. Even a little child could 
not find such an error, when the faith of all the Church 
holds to and professes three Omnipotents." At these 
words, a scholastic teacher, Tenie by name, laughed and 
whispered loudly the words of Athanasius in the creed, 
"and yet there are not three, but only one omnipotent 
being." Reproached for this untimely remark, he boldly 
quoted the words of Daniel, "Thus, senseless sons of 
Israel, without judging or knowing the truth, you have 
condemned one of your brethren. Return to judgment, 
and judge the judge himself, for he is condemned from 
his own mouth." Then the Archbishop rising justified 
as well as he could, by changing the terms, the idea of the 
legate, and tried to show that the Father was omnipotent, 
the Son omnipotent, the Spirit omnipotent, and that who- 
ever denied this ought not to be listened to, but that any 
brother who could declare his faith in this might be heard 
about the rest with calmness. Abelard began to breathe 
more freely, delighted to have the chance of professing 
and expounding his faith. He took hope and courage. 
The memory of St. Paul before the Areopagus and the 
Jewish council came into his mind. If he could only tell 
them his faith he would be saved. His adversaries saw 
his scheme and cried out that all they wanted was that he 
should repeat the creed of Athanasius. And as he might 
have said that he did not know it by heart, they put a copy 
at once before his eyes. It was an ingenious trick. Abe- 
lard read what he could of it, but the trial was fatal. He 
was condemned and sent into imprisonment in the convent 
of St. Medard. 

But the sentence of the council, though a triumph for 
the priesthood, was not approved by the popular voice. 
The crowd of students clamored for the release of their 
master. They complained of the iniquity of the sentence. 
They denied the right of the trial. Their pressing de- 
mands did not render Abelard contented with his compul- 
sory monastic life. He was willing to be a monk, but not 



ABELARD. 197 



upon compulsion. He could endure convent life, but not 
in a subordinate place. His escape was soon made, was 
connived at by the civil authorities, and the monks his 
oppressors were glad to compromise by allowing him to 
live a hermit life while he owned his allegiance to their 
convent. 

It was a wild place to which Abelard retired, the coun- 
terpart of the valley of Clairvaux. The fields there 
would bear the harvests, but the spot was little visited by 
human feet. It was on the borders of a tributary of the 
Seine. Here he built a little oratory of straw and reeds, 
and dedicated it to the Trinity, hoping, as he professed, 
to pass the rest of his troubled life far from the haunts of 
men. But he could not so escape from his fame. Though 
his desert cell was ninety miles from Paris, it was soon 
found out, and the youth of the city flocked out to encamp 
around it. Little huts of innumerable scholars soon en- 
vironed this oratory of the recluse. Some pitched their 
tents to be ready to follow if he should flee again. All 
were contented to lie on the bare .ground and to live on 
the rudest fare if they might thus enjoy the lessons of this 
divine teacher. It was a wild joy that Abelard felt in find- 
ing this turn in his fortune. He might feel that even poverty 
and disgrace could not destroy him. He seemed to be living 
the life of St. Jerome over again. His least want was 
anticipated by his ardent disciples and even priests brought 
out to him their offerings. His hut of reeds was soon re- 
placed by a more solid structure of wood and stone. The 
&-roup of emblematic figures by which it was adorned 
served at once to express the soundness of faith and the 
shrewdness of science of the skillful master. From a 
single block were carved the three Divine persons, each 
with human form. The Father was placed in the middle, 
clothed in a long robe, a band hung from his neck and 
was crossed upon his heart, a cloak covered his shoulders, 
and extended also to the other two. From the clasp of 
the mantle on the right, hung a gilt band, with the words, 
Thou art my Son. The Son sat on the right of the Father 
with a similar robe, but without a girdle, with his hands 
crossed upon his breast, and to the left a band with this 
inscription, Thou art my Father. On the other side the 



198 ABEL ABB. 



Holy Spirit, in a similar attitude, bearing this inscription, 
I am the breath of both. The Son bore the crown of 
thorns, the Holy Spirit a crown of olive branch, the 
Father a close crown, and his left hand held a globe. 
These were the attributes of Empire. The Son and the 
Holy Spirit looked towards the Father, who alone had 
covering on his feet. This strange image of the Trinity 
was in existence still about fifty years ago. 

The name, however, which Abelard gave to his home in 
the desert when it thus became a monastery in the desert, 
another Thebaid, was the Paraclete or Comforter. It was 
a sign of true consolation that the oppression of the great 
and the frown of the holy could not prevent the spread of 
the truth, that reason was constant in her attractions, and 
wisdom was justified in her children. The monastery of 
Abelard was another thing from that of Clairvaux. There 
discipline was all important. Here truth was the principal 
end. There men went to learn obedience and practise 
self-denial. Here men went to learn philosophy in the prac- 
tice of self-denial. There the study was a mere relief to the 
severe exercises of penance and the cell. Here prayer 
and fasting were an occasional change from the pressure 
and zeal of the school. Bernard taught his disciples how 
to conform. Abelard taught his how to inquire. The 
one guided them backwards through practice into faith, 
the other forwards through faith into practice. 

And now, first, when fate had brought these two great 
men each to the head of his wilderness convent, did they 
come together in the trial of their power. The young 
monk of Clairvaux had now become the model saint of 
the world, had reconciled the disputes of kings and popes, 
and had achieved a wider renown than that even of the 
famous teacher. A struggle now impended between au- 
thority and reason, between the champion of things estab- 
lished and the prophet of things to come. Already the 
watch-dog of the Church had scented the heresy of those 
Parisian teachings, where the honor of God was always in 
danger. He had approved the measures of silencing this 
daring innovation, and Abelard by instinct counted him 
among his enemies. He was not slow to declare his 
hatred and contempt of one who was afraid of free thought. 



ABELARD. 199 



But when it was rumored in the seclusion of Paraclete 
that the mighty man who had compassed Europe with his 
power, and whose persuasive speech could win souls away 
from the most ingenious argument, had decreed to crush 
the heretic, when the clouds that had been long gathering, 
of murmurs, and complaint, and accusation, were centered 
into the thunderbolt which Bernard held, Abelard began 
to fear. He saw that one or the other must fall, and he 
trembled lest Hector should become the victim of Achilles. 
His excitement became at one time so great that he con- 
ceived the design of escaping into the East, and going to 
live as a Christian among the enemies of Christ. He 
hoped here at least to find oblivion if he could not find 
charity. He despaired now of trie truth when the great 
and the holy were in league to subdue the truth. It had 
been better for him to carry there his misery than to take 
the part which he took. 

It was just at this time of fear and perplexity that Abe- 
lard was invited by the monks of St. Gildas de Rhuys to 
become their abbot. The call was accepted more because 
it gave an asylum and a haven than for the honor that it 
implied. This lovely convent was situated on the Atlantic 
coast in a corner of the ancient province of Brittany. 
The melancholy plash of the waves, and the vexed surface 
of a boundless sea made it a fit place for retirement and 



brooding thought. There the recluse might converse with 
God and learn to hate the world. But the monks there 
were a wild, gross, and unlettered race. They spoke in a 
barbarous tongue, their habits were brutal, their manners 
were fierce and uncouth. They were ground down by the 
exactions of a feudal lord, and consoled themselves for 
the payment of one-half their revenue in tributes by spend- 
ing the other half in debauchery. Abelard soon found 
that his learning there could have as little weight as his 
authority. The discipline which he would establish found 
no favor. He was surrounded by snares, he was wearied 
with vain endeavors, and his days here were mainly passed 
in reveries of profound sadness, in the mournful retrospect 
of his past life, and in the composition of elegiac verses, 
which are not the least monuments of his fame. These 
touching effusions became at last his consolation. His 



2oo ABELABD. 



own song reconciled him to grief, and to bewail his lot 
became at last his luxury. He had one melancholy pleas- 
ure in making over his whole property of Paraclete, the 
oratory, the woods, the neighboring hamlet and the fruit- 
bearing orchards to Heloise, who had now become an 
eminent Abbess, alike distinguished for wisdom, purity, 
and sanctity. The correspondence which had long ceased 
between them now began again, but it was no longer about 
affairs of love, but about spiritual realities. 

We cannot go here into a criticism of these remarkable 
letters, which constitute a monument in literary history. 
They remain models of chaste, ardent, and dignified epis- 
tolary style even to our own day. There is at once a 
warmth and a reserve about them which shows the latent 
attachment and the present remorse. They are letters 
which a spiritual adviser might write to his friend or pupil, 
and yet they are not wholly free from the fire of passion. 
They are the letters of regenerated love, of love made 
wise by bitter experience. They discuss a large variety of 
topics, yet the interest centres always upon the persons of 
the writers. If Heloise asks the advice of the monk upon 
some point of convent management, you still can see that 
she cared more for the words of the man than the answer 
which he gave to her question. If Abelard goes over 
some story of his former sufferings you see that his chief 
joy is in the passage where Heloise was his pupil and his 
spouse. He became soon the visitor of his former home, 
the director of its religious exercises, the shepherd of that 
flock. No happier period of his troubled career was there 
than this, when he could see the dearest friend of his soul 
leading her virgins to the altar, and living before them a 
life of exemplary holiness. He could bear the rudeness 
of his own convent when he saw the beauty and piety of 
these holy sisters. It was his prayer that he might be 
buried there, and he trusted that the virtue of this, his 
pupil, might atone for the sins of the master. The nuns 
reverenced him as their Father in God, and they would 
listen with attention to the ingenious speech with which 
he beguiled the hours on the form of the human soul, 
and repeat with fervor the prayers which he gave them. 

But this renewal of friendship with his former partner 



ABELARD. 201 



gave rise to scandals which added to the dislike of the 
monks in that convent by the sea. The life of the Abbot 
was more than once attempted, and the dagger was threat- 
ened where poison would not work. Abelard was com- 
pelled to flee by night, and for a time lived in entire 
seclusion at the house of a nobleman in Brittany. He 
obtained at last an open release from his monastic duties, 
and for a time was able to keep peace with the world, and 
enjoy the society of friends. This period of his life Abe- 
lard passed in reviewing the works which he had written, 
in developing his system of philosophy and theology, and 
writing his own personal history. If he could have been 
content with this, he might have died with honor and in 
the hope even of sainthood. For great men were his 
friends, all confessed his wisdom, and no stain was upon 
his substantial orthodoxy. But the habit and the glory of 
his youth lingered with him still. In the fifty-seventh year 
of his age he took the fatal step of opening again his 
school on Mount St. Genevieve, the place of his earliest 
triumphs. His fame at once revived. Students flocked 
in crowds to listen to the gray-haired sage that had taught 
their fathers, and survived a whole generation of those 
who listened to his youthful daring arguments. With the 
fame of the teacher the odium of the heretic revived. 
Now his compiled works could be brought in evidence 
against him. The enemies which his strictness, his zeal, 
and his commanding temper, had made on every side 
would justify the charge. Men could recall that sentence 
of twenty years before, which he might believe forgotten. 
And above all, now there was a towering champion of the 
ancient faith, who had devoted his head and his heart to 
the extermination of all novelty as to the preservation of 
all holiness. 

Bernard and Abelard had met some five years before on 
the occasion of the Pope's proselyting progress through 
France. Their natures were too dissimilar for any inti- 
macy to arise, and the reception of the Pope on the part 
of Abelard was not cordial enough to quiet the suspicions 
of the watchful ally of the Head of the Church. He saw 
that there was danger in this man. Some changes which 
he noticed in a subsequent visit to Heloise at her convent 



202 ABELABD. 



in the words of the Lord's prayer which Abelard had en- 
joined, increased his doubt. . This came soon to the ears 
of Abelard, and a quarrel, fomented by sarcasm on one 
side and zeal on the other, arose. We need not detail its 
progress. The attempts at conciliation on the part of 
Bernard were futile by reason of his extravagant demands. 
Like similar attempts in our own day, all the concessions 
were required upon one side. The points which the re- 
former was ready to yield were precisely those which the 
conservative did not care to gain. The warfare soon grew 
warm and obstinate. Bernard used his eloquence against 
the perfidious dogmatiser as he called him, and invoked 
upon him the curse of God and the execration of all 
Christians. Abelard, on his side, treated with contempt 
these charges and raised the cry of freedom. The parti- 
sans of both entered into the strife. The piety was on 
the side of one, the genius on the side of the other. Ber- 
nard could see that a majority of voices were ready to 
join with him in condemning one who had dared to im- 
prove upon the Fathers. Abelard could feel strong in the 
thought that his minority was made up of brilliant minds 
and stout hearts, and was inspired by the love of freedom. 
But it was an unequal contest in that day of darkness. It 
is hard even in this age of light. 

At last, weary of being defamed, and denounced, Abe- 
lard demanded a public trial of his views, at which his 
great adversary should be present, and refute him, if he 
could. On the eighth day of Pentecost, in the year 1140, 
the king had promised to visit the sacred relics exposed that 
day to the reverence of the nobles and people. It was a 
great and long expected occasion. And this time Abelard 
chose for his triumph — or his fall. Bernard was at first 
unwilling to go. But his partisans showed him that 
absence would be construed into fear and would be fatal. 
He went up with a sad heart, repeating to himself this 
word of the Gospel, " Take no thought of what ye shall 
say, for it shall be given you at the appointed hour ; " and 
the Psalmist's words, "God is my stay, I will not fear what 
man can do." 

It would require a whole lecture to describe this remark- 
able council, the vast array of knights and bishops, of 



ABEL A ill). 203 



deans and abbots, of holy men and profane men, that came 
up to this clerical tournament, the appearance of the com- 
batants, one sad and downcast in look, giving benedictions 
to the crowds which knelt as they passed him, the other 
bold, upright and confident, frightening by his majestic 
glance, those who were curious enough to look upon his 
face ; the splendid ceremonies of the first day, when all 
the pomp and magnificence of the nation seemed gathered 
around the altar of the Cathedral of Sens, when music and 
art, and the light of torches and the glitter of golden 
robes combined to seduce the people from the truth to the 
ritual, how ingeniously Bernard contrived beforehand all 
things to prejudice the judges against his rival, how he 
arranged the Court and packed it with tools of the Church, 
we must pass all this, and tell only in a few words the 
story of the trial and its issue. 

On the second day the court was opened. The king 
sat on his throne and the fathers of the Church around 
him. In front was Bernard, holding in his hand the here- 
tical books. When Abelard entered and passed through 
the breathless and imposing throng, his rival, ordered the 
seventeen charges of heresy to be read in a loud voice. 
Abelard saw then that he had come not to be argued with ; 
but to be sentenced. He declared angrily, that he would 
not hear a word, that they had no right to judge him, that 
he appealed to the Pope, and left the hall at once. The 
judges at first were filled with consternation. They dared 
not condemn him after such an appeal. But Bernard saw 
that it would never do to let the matter rest so. The per- 
suasion that he meant for Abelard he used now upon the 
judges. And, after much debate, the monk Peter Abe- 
lard was convicted of heresy on fourteen counts. The 
principal of these were that he denied the doctrine of a 
Trinity of persons, that he asserted that the man Christ 
was not the second person in the Trinity, that he denied 
the doctrine of special grace to the converted, that he 
asserted that Christ saves men by his life and his exam- 
ple and not by his vicarious death, that he made God the 
author of evil, that he taught of sin that it is in the will, 
rather than the act. These charges were made out by in- 
sulated extracts from the works of Abelard, by garbling his 
words, and putting forced meanings upon them. 



204 ABE LARD. 



But the sentence of the council did not yet decide the 
matter. Defenders sprang up all around, who showed the 
falsity of the charges, and affirmed the substantial ortho- 
doxy of the convicted heretic. Heloise, whose earnest piety 
was undoubted, exhibited a confession of faith which Abe- 
lard had prepared for her. The appeal to the Pope remained. 
But little trust could be placed in that, for Bernard, whose 
influence at Rome was unbounded, took care to surround 
Innocent with influences hostile to the condemned. The 
hesitation of the Pope was chided as a crime, and rebuked 
as a scandal. The consequences were dwelt upon of 
allowing the voice of Rome to set aside the sentence of so 
grave a council ; it would endanger the unity of the 
Church. The example of Arnold of Brescia was cited as 
an instance of the dangerous tendency of this heresy. And 
the confused Head of Christiandom was at last persuaded 
to issue his fatal bull, which ran thus : " By these presents, 
we order the bishops of Sens and Rheins to shut up separ- 
ately in the convents most suitably Peter Abelard and 
Arnold of Brescia, inventors of blind dogmas, and foes of 
the Catholic faith, and to burn their heretical books wher- 
ever they may be found. Given at Lateran on the 
eighteenth day of August." This order was secret. A 
public letter was written, declaring him guilty of heresy, 
and forbidding him wholly to teach in public. 

Before this decision was known, Abelard had began his 
journey to Rome. On his way was the renowned monas- 
tery of Clugny, which had furnished so many great men of 
the Church in former ages. The abbot here now was a 
man of large soul, and no friend to the ascetic Bernard. 
With him Abelard stopped to rest, and take counsel. Here 
he first learned the decision of Rome from a messenger 
sent by Bernard to the abbot. The skill of this messenger 
was employed in so reconciling Abelard to his life there 
that the secret sentence should not need to be proclaimed. 
A new declaration of faith was drawn out from him which 
was pronounced sufficient. Abelard saw that it was use- 
less longer to struggle with destiny. 

He enrolled himself as a monk of Clugny, waiving his 
rank, and trying to hide himself only among the lowest. 
He put on the coarsest garments, neglected all care of his 



ABELAED. 205 



body, and kept out of sight as much as he could. His 
exemplary piety became conspicuous. In spite of his 
reluctance the brethren would have him preach and lead 
them in the Holy Communion. But most of his time he 
passed in silence, reading and prayer. His studies were 
still threefold, in theology, philosophy and letters. He be- 
came only a pure intellect. His passions were all smoth- 
ered or crushed out of him. All that he seemed to care 
for was to do his monastic duties, and yet, buried under 
this cold exterior, the soul of the prophet was burning still. 
The finishing touch which he gave here to his great work 
of philosophy shows the unconquerable spirit. He pre- 
dicts in this his future fame, that time will prove his opin- 
ions just, will vindicate his science, and will show that he 
has been the victim of envy and a martyr to the truth. 

His last days were passed in a beautiful spot on the 
border of the Saone. The disease which wasted his body 
was lightened by the cares of friendship and every mo- 
ment was spent in reading or dictating, or prayer. It was 
an edifying close to a troubled life. Weary and worn, the 
sufferer became, what he had never been in any fortune 
before, humble and submissive. He was content to leave 
his monument now in the mark which he had made upon 
his age. On the twenty-first of April, 1142, he tranquilly 
expired, being sixty-three years old. 

After a brief sojourn at Clugny, his body was borne, 
according to his last request, to the convent of the Com- 
forter, where his best beloved might watch it. There for 
twenty years longer Heloise guarded it as a precious 
treasure, till her own remains were laid beside it. The 
ages have still kept sacred this tomb. The fury of the 
last French Revolution, which destroyed the landmarks of 
the convent, and the chair in which Bernard sat when Abe- 
lard was judged, spared the bones of these lovers, and 
the world now know where they rest. The hands of 
beauty hang garlands on the stone, and the tears of piety 
drop upon the mound, where the memory of this pair is 
kept. Abelard has found an immortal fame where he did 
not expect it. 

This is but a meagre sketch of the life of the great 
teacher of the twelfth century. And yet it has left little 



2o6 ABELARD. 



space for any analysis of his character or criticisms of his 
opinions and his influence. He was a man to win admira- 
tion and kindle enthusiasm rather than a friend to be 
loved. The place of leader of right belonged to him. 
Ambitous, proud and haughty, he had still the power and 
the consciousness that could make his arrogance tolerable. 
Men saw in him a lover of truth, and honored his aspira- 
tion. They were subdued by the speech and the life of 
Bernard, but they were quickened by the words of Abe- 
lard. But the investigation did not bring to him, as to 
Newton, personal humility. He was wont to look down 
rather than upward, to the men beneath more than to the 
God above him. Reverence was neither a natural nor an. 
acquired trait with him. His monastic life was a penance 
more than a pleasure, a retreat from misery more than a 
resort of faith. He was the priest of intellect more than of 
devotion, earnest to show more how God might be known 
than how he might be worshipped. His mission in the 
twelfth century was to awaken its manliness, to sound the 
note of freedom and to bid the kneeling penitents that 
crowded at the altars to walk erect under the heaven of 
God. 

He opened to the human mind a broad domain that 
superstition had shut off from it, and taught that the soul 
might reason about the unseen world as well as the things 
which were common to the outward eye. He was a man 
of true moral courage, not trammeled by precedents, not 
afraid to search and try. Bernard was brave before men, 
but was afraid of dogmas. He dared not come boldly 
to the throne of God. Abelard was often infirm in his 
dealing with men, and ready to flee from oppression, but 
he would dare all difficulties of doctrine, and knock at the 
very door of heaven. He had no idols. He worshipped 
no symbols. He asked the meaning and the right of all 
things prescribed. He was a dictator of truth, not an in- 
terpreter of doctrine. He is immortal in history as the 
pioneer of that Rationalism which produced Galileo in 
science, Luther in faith, and Milton in song. It was 
reserved for nobler men to carry out the principles which 
he declared. In the ancient Church he reminds us of 
Jerome of Bethlehem, in the modern of Erasmus of Rot- 



ABELARD. 207 



terdam. He had the same vanity, the same pedantry, the 
same sense of power, the same dread of persecution with 
these remarkable men. 

Bernard with all his honors died a disappointed man. 
Abelard in all his reverses saw at last his triumph sure. 
The reform which he brought about could not be hindered 
by the anathemas of any priesthood. He knew that the 
truth would prevail. The Church was against him, but 
God was on his side. He trusted in the quickening force 
of time to show the fruit of the seed which he scattered. 
The labors of this generation are proving that the scholar 
of the twelfth century was wiser than the monk. The one 
belongs to the Church, but the other belongs to the world, 
which is wider than the Church. The memory of the one 
is enshrined at the altar. The influence of the other is 
felt in the workshop and the college. The glory of the 
one is a waning tradition, the glory of the other is an ex- 
panding energy. The first leads men backward to the 
fear, the second forward to the knowledge of God. 



2o8 ST. DOMINIC AND ST. FRANCIS. 



VIII. 
ST. DOMINIC AND ST. FRANCIS. 

There are two principal influences by which, in the 
Providence of God, reform and conversion and holiness 
are brought about, — preaching and example. We are 
moved on one side by the eloquent word, on the other by 
the consistent life of those who would persuade us to any 
truth. The silent lesson of the house and the street goes 
parallel with the spoken appeal of the pulpit. For a com- 
plete efficiency, these must be united in the same person, 
he who calls to righteousness and faith must show in his 
own life the way. The best influence of the preacher is 
vitiated or nullified if a virtuous life be wanting, and 
exemplary piety too often goes unseen and unheeded, be- 
cause it has no gift of the tongue. The true Apostles of 
the world, such men as Paul and Ambrose and Bernard, 
and Wesley, have all prevailed by this twofold power. 
They have shown the instances of what they called men to 
believe and be. 

In the Saviour of the world, these gifts were combined 
in the highest proportion. His perfect holiness harmon- 
ized with, fitted into his inspired word, as a soul into the 
body, so that both were equally wondrous and equally 
captivating. But this combination of gifts is compara- 
tively rare. The great preachers of the world have not 
been oftenest its saints, though many such have been can- 
onized in spite of their evil lives. And probably the 
largest number of those who have walked closely with 
God below, have been soon forgotten upon the earth and 
find their reward mainly in heaven. It seems ordained 
that to most men only one of these influences shall be 
useful, that some shall persuade with the tongue, and 
others with the life. 

The preponderating power of these two forms of influ- 



ST. DOMINIC AND ST. FRANCIS. 209 

ence depends somewhat upon the object to which they are 
directed. Preaching has the most influence upon the rea- 
son of men, example upon their practice. The one helps 
men to know the truth, the other guides them into righte- 
ousness. The first takes charge of doctrine, the second of 
life. For correct opinions, for conviction and persuasion 
to faith we follow the orator of the Gospel, him who can 
expound it wisely and illustrate it skilfully. For upright 
conduct, for instruction in the divine life, we observe the 
meek servant of God, whose holiness points us the way to 
heaven. This fact is illustrated in numerous and familiar 
instances. If you inquire who are the great orators and 
expounders that guide the public opinion, whose word is 
so far law that it can sway thousands of men together and 
reverse suddenly the solemn and repeated resolves of 
parties and states, you will not find that such men persuade 
to holiness by their lives ; men do not go to them to learn 
practical virtue ; the wise, who adopt their views, would 
smile if you mentioned such old-fashioned graces as tem- 
perance, honesty, chastity, or even consistency in connec- 
tion with them. 

It has come to that pass that we almost expect that a 
master of speech shall be a demagogue or an intriguer, 
anxious to be President, Senator, Bishop, or something of 
the sort. Goodness, too, is often associated with feeble- 
ness, and you will hear it dolefully insisted that our good 
men are not great. It is no more true to-day, however, 
than it was in former days. The intellect of man will pay 
its homage now as ever to commanding eloquence, but the 
life of the world will now as ever be built upon the founda- 
tion of life. Error will be put down by preaching still, 
but sin be best rebuked by practical holiness. 

It is hard to tell whether at the beginning of the thir- 
teenth century there were a wider demand and a wider 
sphere for preaching or for example as a means of Chris- 
tian persuasion. The Church found itself in a perplexity 
between heresy and corruption, between doctrines that 
falsified the Catholic faith, and practice that degraded the 
Christian life. Abeiard had left his memory and the fruits 
of his word in a wide and growing hostility to the creed of 
Rome, and the sanctity and strictness of Bernard's mle 
14 



210 ST. DOMINIC AND ST. FBANCIS. 

had its reaction now in the dissolute life of priests and 
monks and the clerical state everywhere. The charges 
which heretics brought against the established Church 
were justified by the scandalous habits of the authorized 
defenders of the Church. That which should have fur- 
nished the bulwark against false doctrine, furnished the 
reason and the excuse for schism. A reformer who looked 
about for the most pressing work of change might doubt 
whether the men out of the Church needed most to be 
brought into it, or the men in the Church, by name and 
office, needed most to be converted to its spirit. The con- 
vents demanded their missionary not less than the unlaw- 
ful crowds that stormed against the Pope and the priesthood 
in the fields or in rebellious cities. 

There was a work of grace to be done at Clugny and 
Citeaux as well as in heretical Lyons. It was the singular 
fortune of the Church that both these needs were simul- 
taneously perceived and met by the heart and the zeal of 
two remarkable Apostolic men. One saw with fear the 
departure of the age from the sound creed of the Fathers, 
and gave himself to the task of exterminating heresy, the 
other saw with pain the loss of ancient godliness and the 
forgetfulness of Christian vows, and gave himself to the 
work of restoring the Apostolic poverty and humility. 

The influence of St. Dominic and St. Francis in the 
world has been great enough, and the province of each 
distinct enough, to make a separate account of them and 
their followers interesting. But the detail of the lives of 
both is so monotonously filled with marvellous legends and 
puerile miracles, that they can be treated in one lecture 
without injustice and with some advantage. Both of them 
seem to have substantially represented their idea ; inde- 
pendently of that, they have no especial attraction for us. 
The first, the founder of the Preaching Friars, embodies 
to us the conception and the work of that fraternity. The 
second, the founder of the Minorites, or practising Friars, 
is the finest illustration which history has furnished of 
what that order was intended to be. 

St. Dominic is the monk of the pulpit, who warns the 
skeptical and pleads with the wavering, and is great there. 
St. Francis is the monk of the street, who rebukes world- 



ST. DOMINIC AND ST. FRANCIS. 211 



liness and shames luxury, when he kneels by the leper's 
side and gives his scanty garment to the beggar along the 
way. Both are mendicants, but to the one riches are an 
encumbrance, to the other a curse. The preaching friar 
rejects worldly possessions that he may not be hampered 
in his zeal for God's truth ; the practising friar will be 
poor because the Apostles were so, because only by pov- 
erty can one hope to inherit God's kingdom. As theory 
goes before fact, as preaching must go before practice, and 
as the life of St. Dominic was a little earlier in point of 
time, we will call that first under a rapid survey. We can- 
not, of course, give anything like a complete sketch of the 
life of the Spanish monk. If you are curious in that way, 
you may find it written as with a pen of fire by the bril- 
liant Lacordaire, the most eminent of modern Catholic 
preachers in France. 

St. Dominic was born at Calavoga, in the province of old 
Castile, in the year 1170. His parents were both of noble 
extraction. His father, Felix Gusman, bore a name, which 
valor against the Moors, not less than a long line of 
haughty ancestors, had rendered honorable among the 
grandees of Spain. His mother added to her family 
renown the better fame of personal sanctity. Before her 
third son was born, a dream came to her as to the mother 
of Bernard, which the issue proved to be prophetic. It 
was of a whelp, who carried in his mouth a burning torch, 
with which it set the whole world on fire. Precocious aus- 
terities are recorded of the infant. They tell how he 
would pray before he could read or even speak, and how 
he would get out of his cradle and lie on the hard floor 
that he might early know the privation of the monastic 
state, how he showed no taste for any childish amusements, 
but asked only to be instructed in the duties of a child of 
God. 

At the university, whither he went at the age of four- 
teen, an extraordinary charity and an extensive culture 
made him conspicuous among his fellows. While he 
learned the lore of the Fathers and the wisdom of the 
Scriptures, he was unbounded in his gifts to the poor and 
his labors of self-denial. In his twenty-first year, he had 
sold all his patrimony, all his books, all even of his own 



212 ST. DOMINIC AND ST. FBANCIS. 

writings, to succor the needy. In this condition, one day 
he was appealed to by a poor woman for alms to redeem 
her brother who had been enslaved by the Moors. " I 
have no gold or silver," said Dominic, "but I can work. 
You may take me and sell me to the Moor in exchange 
for your brother. I will be his slave." Had the offer 
been accepted, the Catholic Church would have lost one 
of its pillars. For the reverence with which Dominic was 
already regarded by scholars and people showed that a 
great man had arisen. 

St. Dominic was about twenty-five years old when he 
passed through the process of conversion, when he was 
made to see his own sinfulness and need of a Saviour, and 
had all those mystical experiences that enter into the work 
of spiritual redemption. He became a canon in his 
native diocese and set himself to preach to the people. 
The description of his life for the next eight years reminds 
us strongly of the style and method of revival preachers 
in our own day. He was greatly concerned for the salva- 
tion of souls, and shocked by the growth of heresy. His 
daily persuasion and his nightly prayer were that the un- 
believing might be reconciled to God. But in his own 
neighborhood infidelity had comparatively a small hold. 
He saw more of it in the journey which he took through 
the south of France with his bishop in the year 1205. 
There the whole land was overrun with heresy from the 
feudal lord to the humblest peasant. The first and the 
last spectacle to Dominic was of a land delivered over to 
the enemy of souls. All the zeal in his heart was fired. 
His bishop was of the same mind, and together they peti- 
tioned the Pope that they might stay in France and con- 
vert these heretics. 

The term of two years was allowed them, and they 
proceeded to occupy it in a tour of preaching. What 
could not be done by fire and sword Dominic undertook to 
do with his feeble voice. And wonderful instances are re- 
lated of his power with this, which were believed by the 
pious of his time to be miracles wrought by God's spirit. 
Men compared his power to strike the hard-hearted and 
open their souls to the truth to the influence of Orpheus, 
drawing after him the rocks and the trees. But it was a 



ST. DOMINIC AND ST. FBANCIS. 213 

desperate hope by the preaching of a single man to 
destroy the hydra of heresy. 

Dominic had been already a preacher to the heretics 
three years when the war with the Albigenses broke out. 
This bloody crusade which was the terrible revenge which 
the Roman Church took for the murder of its legate, Peter 
de Castelman, has been falsely charged to the advice and 
influence of Dominic. But there is no proof that he en 
couraged any of its outrageous cruelties. He did noi 
seek to exterminate, but to convert heretics, and though 
he went with the army of Count Simon de Montfort, who 
has come down to us as the most blood-thirsty of monsters, 
he tried to moderate the violence of this Christian Nero. 
In another lecture we shall speak of that hideous crusade. 
Dominic's name is properly connected with it by the record 
of his exposures, his zeal, and his daring. One day he 
was waylaid by assassins, but by good fortune escaped. 
When asked what he would have done if he had met them, 
" I would have thanked God," said he, "and would have 
begged as a favor that my blood might have been let out 
drop by drop, and my limbs lopped off one by one, that my 
torment might have been prolonged." He offered too 
again to sell himself as a slave for the benefit of a poor 
heretic who complained that he could not give up his false 
doctrine for fear of losing his livelihood. This period of 
his life, however, is so crowded with stories of miraculous 
cures, and wonders of all kinds, that it is very difficult to 
separate the true from the false. It is certain, however, 
that before the war was over, Dominic had gained a repu- 
tation for sanctity, for eloquence, and for devotedness 
unequalled by any teacher in the Church since the great 
Bernard. He was counted the champion of the Church, 
and his only arms were teaching, patience, penance, fasting, 
watching, tears and prayer. 

The first executive act of Dominic was the foundation 
of the famous nunnery of St. Prouille. This was designed 
to furnish a Christian education to such children of heretics 
as could be decoyed therein and so to prepare a supply of 
Blessed Virgins for the support of Catholic order. In all 
ages of the Church nunneries have been the guage and 
thermometer of the Catholic faith. The persistence of 



214 ST. DOMINIC AND ST. FBANCIS. 

women who take the vow may be relied on with far more con- 
fidence than that of men. But a much more important 
gift to the Church was his invention of the Rosary. This 
in its essence is a form of prayer. But it has its sign in a 
string of one hundred and sixty-five beads, with a cross 
attached to them. These are arranged by tens, with one 
large bead at the end of every ten. The small beads 
mark the number of Ave Marias that are to be said, the 
fifteen large beads the Lord's Prayer to be so many times 
repeated. The number fifteen was chosen because the 
Catholics reckon fifteen principal mysteries in the life of 
Christ. The whole form is so arranged as to contain an 
abstract of the life of our Saviour and of his Mother. 
The rosary speedily became popular, and before a century 
was used throughout the Church. No pious woman would 
be without it. It was worn on the necks of friars with 
beads of black wood, and on the necks of kings with 
beads of gold. Beneath many a purple robe it was placed 
next the heart, and tyrants who meditated crime could 
worship God at the same moment as they told over its 
successive prayers. It guides to-day the devotions of the 
poor and the unlettered, and in many households it is 
counted every day as the excuse for falsehood, as the 
means of penance and the hope of salvation. 

But his greatest work was begun when, in the year 12 15, 
he established the order of the Preaching Friars. Here- 
tofore the monastic and the clerical life had been mainly 
kept distinct. The convents had furnished, indeed, emi- 
nent preachers, but in most instances when they became 
preachers they ceased to be monks. A few distinguished 
men like Bernard, were privileged to speak to the people 
without priestly orders, but in the main those who chose 
the ascetic life were preachers more by example than by 
word. Dominic conceived the plan of joining these ap- 
parently separate functions. He could not see why one 
who had disciplined his soul by severe exercises of pen- 
ance, and confirmed his faith by earnest self-denial, should 
not be the very fittest person to declare the truth. The 
studies of the convent seemed to him a better preparation 
for the ministry of the word than much familiarity with the 
world and its corruptions. He saw the clergy secularized, 



ST. DOMINIC AND ST. FRANCIS. 



that it had become merely an echo of the convenience or 
the whim of the civil rulers, that its verdict and teaching 
were based on the morality of the time more than the 
standards of the Church and the sacred Scriptures. He 
saw, too, that the holiness, the austerity, the wisdom of the 
monks were neglected and forgotten, and deprived of their 
just influence, by being hidden always in the cloister. And 
he believed that in uniting these offices he should make 
both more vital, pure, and efficient. It was a novel and 
not an attractive scheme. For those who believed that the 
true service of God is found in solitude and perpetual 
prayer, would dread the commerce with worldly vices and 
intrigues which preaching demanded, and the regular 
clergy would strenuously oppose any such practical rebuke 
to their order. 

The number of brethren that Dominic was able to 
gather at first was very small. There were only sixteen 
who united to form the first convent, and they could have 
no legal existence until they had secured the approbation 
of the Cardinals and the Pope. At the fourth council of 
the Lateran, one of the most gorgeous and imposing that 
the Church had seen, a canon had been passed that no 
new religious order should be chartered. The Pope at 
that time, Innocent III, though very much in favor of 
multiplying preachers, thought that there were already 
enough of monastic systems. The multiplication of 
Orders seemed only fatally to weaken the unity of the 
Church. The claim of the Vatican to undivided lordship 
could not be so well sustained when there were so many 
hostile bodies claiming to be the possessors of pure Catho- 
lic truth. But the piety and the importunity of Dominic 
together worked upon the heart of the Pope, and a con- 
venient dream, in which he saw the Lateran Church falling 
and Dominic stepping in to prop it up, induced him to 
grant his consent, and sanction the enterprise. The next 
Pope confirmed it by his hand and seal, and two bulls, 
dated the twenty-sixth of December, 12 16, the morning after 
the Christmas festival, mark the formal birth of a new order 
of Christian Apostles, second in influence only to that 
which was gathered in an upper room in Judea. Since 
that day the successor of Peter has found his most ready 



216 ST. DOMINIC AND ST. FRANCIS. 

and faithful ally in the successor of Dominic. The master 
of the sacred palace is appointed to be the watchman, the 
teacher, the critic, the friend of the triple-crowned sover- 
eign. What the prime minister is to England's Queen, 
what Richelieu was to Louis, that is the chief of the 
Dominicans to the Vicegerent of Christ upon the earth. 

The rule which Dominic chose for the guidance of his 
order was that of St Augustine. It was simple, but strict 
and absolute. It enjoined poverty but did not encourage 
beggary. It provided for a godly and sober life, that so 
the word might have more effect. Convents were to be 
founded, as many as possible, but no monk was to deem 
the convent his home. All were to be ready to take staff 
and go where a field was opened for the conversion of 
souls. No private property was allowed, and all common 
property was held in trust for the poor. The dress was a 
simple white cloak and hood, with a girdle to hold it to- 
gether. Entire disinterestedness was enjoined, and very 
frequent penance. The monks were to be living illustra- 
tions of the truth which they preached. St. Dominic did 
not enjoin squalidness or misery of exterior or forbid even 
the signs of elegance, if these were made subsidiary to the 
great end of preaching the Gospel. The graphic picture 
of the first convent at Toulouse, the very centre of heresy, 
may serve as a description of the style of Dominican life. 
"The cloister was a court-yard, surrounded by a gallery. 
In the middle of the court-yard, according to ancient tra- 
dition, there was a well, the symbol of the living water, 
which springs up to life eternal. Under the flag-stones of 
the gallery tombs were excavated. Along the walls funeral 
inscriptions were carved. In the arch of the vault, the 
acts of the saints of the order were painted. This place 
was sacred. The monks paced silently through it, think- 
ing only upon death and the memory of the Father. 
Around this solemn gallery were ranged the halls for food, 
for study, and for dress, and two doors opened into the 
Church, one to the nave, another to the choir. A stair- 
case led to the second story built over the gallery. Four 
windows at the corners let in the needful light. Four 
lamps threw out their rays during the night. Along these 
high and broad corridors, whose decency was their only 



ST. DOMINIC AND ST. FRANCIS. 217 

ornament, was ranged a symmetrical line of doors exactly 
alike. In the space between hung old pictures, maps, 
plans of cities and castles, the archives of the convent. 
At the sound of the bell, all these doors softly opened. 
Old men, white-haired and tranquil, men of early maturity, 
youths, whose penitence added to the fresh bloom of their 
years, all ages came out together in the same garment. 
The cell of each was large enough only to hold a bed of 
straw or hair, a table and two chairs. A crucifix and some 
holy images were all its ornament. From this living tomb 
the monk passed out when his work was done to his nar- 
row house below. The same garment that he had slept 
and prayed in became his shroud. Over his dust the feet 
of his brethren kept their solemn march; and the songs 
that he joined in before were sung daily as his requiem. 
'O, sublime burial! O, lovely and sacred home!' says the 
enthusiastic Lacordaire. ' For man august palaces have 
been reared. But the dwelling of God's saints is almost 
divine. The skill of man has risen no higher than in 
raising the walls of the peaceful cloister.' " 

The cloister thus described was relinquished when riches 
and pride corrupted the early simplicity of the order. The 
low cells, six feet long and five broad, were changed then 
for more spacious apartments. And this almost divine 
dwelling lasted only sixteen years as the habitation of the 
preaching brothers. The convent which was built in 1232 
in its place is still standing at Toulouse, and since the first 
French revolution has been used for shops and as an inn. 

The first convent was a type in substance of all that 
Dominic founded. His first company of sixteen, like true 
Apostles, had each their separate province of labor and 
in a little time made full proof of their ministry. Before 
the death of the Saint, his rule and name had become an 
important variety of monastic life. On the slopes of the 
Roman hills, the company of his monks, and convents of 
his nuns, were gathered. The Polish ambassador carried 
back to his wild land a trophy of Dominic's power in two 
nephews, who planted the order in that region as a light 
to shine in a dark place. The King of Scotland, who 
heard him in Paris, obtained as a favor that the Preaching 
Friars should be sent to wake up his rude Caledonian 



2i8 ST. DOMINIC AND ST. FEANCIS. 

race. In the chief streets of Madrid, of Paris, of Flor- 
ence, and Avignon, the man of God left flourishing con- 
vents as a testimony to his evangelical power. And the 
city of Bologna, which had long been renowned as the 
chief school of the civil law, became famous as the metro- 
politan city of the new religious order. Here the great, 
and wise, and learned men rejoiced to join the ranks of 
the friars. The doctor's cap was exchanged for the monk's 
hood, and the interpretation of Roman statutes gave way 
to the exposition of the word of God. 

The moment of highest triumph in Dominic's life was 
in the year 1220, on the day of Pentecost, when the first 
General Assembly of his order was gathered in the con- 
vent Church at Bologna. He had just reached fifty years 
of life, but constant travel, preaching, and austerity had 
made him prematurely old. But he saw now the fruits of 
his toil in brethren who came numerously up from the 
North and the South, from all the Catholic lands (but 
Hungary and England) to tell of heretics converted, and 
men who had forsaken all at the call of the Gospel. 
Three years now had passed since his friends were sent 
out on their mission, but they came back with a record of 
service and success that might rival the ancient story of 
the first disciples. Then the learned and the rulers treated 
the new Gospel as folly. Now the best men of the schools 
gladly embraced the hard office of evangelists. Dominic 
looked round with pride upon the goodly throng of honora- 
ble men that waited around him, and it rejoiced his heart 
to hear how their unanimous suffrage confessed their affec- 
tion and regard for him. But he was troubled to find that 
already they had departed somewhat from his original 
plan of poverty, and were accepting donations from the 
great. He would not have them beggars, but he would 
not have any worldly possession to abstract their thoughts 
or affections from the spiritual inheritance, and he per- 
suaded them to give up some territories that had been 
willed to them and refuse in future to be aided in that way. 

One more general chapter of the Order was held at 
Bologna which the Saint attended. It was not given him 
to fulfill his longing wish of going off to the Pagan East 
and becoming a martyr, but his last year of life was spent 



ST. DOMINIC AND ST. FRANCIS. 219 

in a zealous tour of preaching- through the north of Italy 
where heresy was exceedingly rife. His devotion to this 
work was rivalled only by the feats of the great Methodist 
preacher in a more modern age. Every day, and many 
times in a day, was he heard along the way or in the 
churches, proclaiming the riches of divine grace and 
urging the faithless to accept the terms of God's love. 
The gushing flood of his entreaties, in which tears were 
profusely mingled, subdued the hearts which were still 
tender, and the deep undertone of his threatenings awed 
the reckless into submission. And when they knew that 
this man who preached all day, prayed all night, that this 
divine power of binding and loosing came to him only 
through the most signal humility, then they were drawn to 
a state in which power and freedom were so strangely- 
blended, in which one might be busy and useful upon 
earth and yet not be encumbered by the cares of earth. 

At the second general chapter of his order, Dominic had 
the joy of finding that the remaining Christian lands had re- 
ceived his apostles and to count martyrs, too, among those 
whom he had sent out. He was now ready to resign and 
depart, though his preaching fervor did not abate. For 
some time his sick chamber became as a church, and the 
last testament which he left to his brethren was a touching 
sermon upon the Christian virtues and fidelity to the faith. 
I will not describe the death scene. It is enough to say that 
in beauty and in serenity it was like those of other emi- 
nent saints of whom I have spoken. He died in Bologna 
on the sixth of August, 122 1, at the age of fifty-one. His 
remains rest in a splendid mausoleum in the Dominican 
cathedral church of that city- This monument, one of the 
,finest specimens of modern art, is now to myriads a stone 
of pilgrimage. For three centuries offerings have been 
laid there, and the prayers in the holy name of Dominic 
sent up at its side. And the envious Protestant now, who 
wanders in that place, may see at any hour some kneeling 
form before that tomb, when the lamps of the altar are 
out, and the sound of music is still. 

At the great Council of the Lateran, in the year 12 15, 
it was Dominic's fortune to meet a remarkable man, whose 
fame for piety, for endurance, and for miraculous influence 



220 ST. DOMINIC AND ST. FEANCIS. 

had already become wide in Christendom. Francis was 
some twelve years younger than the Spanish monk, but his 
hard discipline had reconciled this difference, and he met 
the great preacher on an equal footing. He was born of 
worthy parents, in the papal town of Assisi. So early did 
he learn to be charitable that it might almost be said that 
he was a mendicant from the cradle. One of his earli- 
est vows was never to refuse alms to any poor man that 
should ask it for the love of God. He kept the vow. 

His early experiences were severe and bitter. For one 
year he was prisoner of war. For another he was racked 
and wasted by a painful disease. But in each of these trials 
his patience was edifying and his faith unyielding. After 
his recovery, as he was one day riding out in a new suit of 
clothes, he met a gentleman who seemed by his raiment to 
be poor and decayed, Francis instantly stopped and ex- 
changed clothes with him. 

His most frequent dreams were of spiritual victories 
through poverty, charity and self-denial. They tell how 
he coveted the most repulsive tasks, how he would kiss the 
sores of lepers, and put his own garments on the vilest 
beggars of the street. Though his parents were rich, and 
he was brought up to habits of thrift, he took strange com- 
fort in the society of the penniless and the outcast. All 
his visions seemed to him to say, "Give and spare not." 
One day, as he was praying before a crucifix outside the 
walls of Assisi. he heard three times a voice, which said, 
" Francis, go and repair my house, which thou seest fall- 
ing." This he construed into a literal command to repair 
the decaying Church. And forgetting the law of honesty 
in his zeal to obey the command, he went and got a horse- 
load of cloth out of his father's shop, sold both horse and 
cloth in a neighboring town, and brought the price to the 
parish priest. This cautious functionary did not like to take 
it. So Francis left it lying in the window, and there his 
father found it when he discovered the affair. The result 
of this was first a flogging, then an imprisonment in chains, 
and finally, when his mother had let him out, a separation 
from his home. 

His father gave him the alternative of coming home 
again like a decent son or formally giving up all claim 



ST. DOMINIC AND ST. FRANCIS. 



to the inheritance. The last condition Francis joyfully 
accepted, and went in it beyond his father's desire. For 
he stripped himself of his clothing, and gave it to his 
father, saying, cheerfully and meekly, " Hitherto I have 
called you father on earth ; but now I say with more con- 
fidence, Our Father who art in Heaven, in whom I place 
all my hope and treasure." The bishop, who stood by ad- 
miring his zeal, ordered some garments to be brought for 
him. The first at hand was a peasant's coarse cloak. The 
young man marked it with chalk with the sign of the 
cross and put it on. It became his permanent dress. 

Francis was twenty-five years old when he was thus cast 
upon the world, without money, without friends, with no 
handicraft, and no resource. He set off on his wander- 
ings however full of faith, and thinking only how he 
might help the poor and execute Christ's commission. 
Where there was squalidness, suffering or disease, there 
he was sure to be found. In the prison and the hospital, 
he knelt before the profane and the unclean. He cared 
for no abuse and no humiliation. When a party of rob- 
bers, who had asked him his business in their haunts and 
had heard his answer that he was the herald of the great 
King, had flung him into a ditch full of snow, he only- 
praised God for the good chance. When he came across 
a new church in the process of building he not only 
begged the means of its completion, but he carried up 
himself the heavy stones as the servant of the masons. 
Feeling however that he was not yet prepared to be an 
apostle, he went apart to a little church called the Por- 
tinneala, about a mile from Assisi, where two years were 
spent in the most rigid exercises of fleshly denial. In 
prayers and tears, in meditation upon the sufferings of 
Christ, in exposure to the hardest weather, he found his 
luxury and joy. Reading those words of Christ, *' Carry 
not gold or silver, or scrip for your journey, or two coats 
or a staff," he instantly gave away his money, shoes, staff 
and girdle, and kept only a single cloak, which he bound 
round him with a cord. Soon his fame was noised abroad 
and many came out to see the miracle of self-denial. The 
narrative of his earlier conversions is quaint and touching. 
Bernard of Quintaval, a rich merchant of Assisi, and a 



222 ST. DOMINIC AND ST. FliANCIS. 

man of wisdom, and authority, hearing of the devotion of 
the young hermit, invited him. to come and sleep at his 
house one night. At midnight, when Bernard seemed to 
be fast in slumber, Francis arose, fell on his knees, and 
making with his arms the sign of the Cross, repeated all 
night with every sign of love, praise, gratitude, penitence 
and devotion, with streaming eyes and choking utterance, 
"My God and my all," "Deus meus et omnia." But 
Bernard was secretly watching him, and when morning 
came he begged Francis to take him as a companion. 
Soon other prominent men joined them, and when in the 
latter part of the year 1209, the Saint brought back from 
Innocent at Rome his consent to the new Order, one hun- 
dred and twenty-seven disciples assembled at the little 
church to call him their leader. This was five years 
before Dominic gained from the Pope a sanction to his 
scheme. 

Of this number, in imitation of Jesus. Francis chose 
twelve to be his special companions and friends. The 
first and most positive rule which he laid down for them 
was absolute poverty. They were to own no house, no 
furniture, not even the clothes which they wore. They 
were to receive the alms of the charitable only as a trust, 
to provide no prospective store of food or raiment, but 
depend only on the Providence of God. This order 
should recall to men, as no other had, the sufferings of 
Him who had no place to lay his head, who was born in a 
stable and died naked upon a cross. It should exemplify 
to the world all the heroic graces of poverty, those sacred 
beatitudes which can appear only in lives freed from the 
goods of the world, humility, meekness, patience and 
fortitude. It should be separate from the worldly passion 
which wealth engenders, which had so fatally corrupted 
the other monastic foundations. The monk professed to 
be a disciple of Christ. Francis would have his whole 
life a visible proof of that vow, and the monks indeed 
saw it in the life of their founder. The old chronicles 
weary in describing Francis' ingenuity of penance ; how 
he sewed his coat with packthread to make it rougher; 
how he slept upon the ground, with a stone for a pillow ; 
how he put ashes upon the hard crust which was his sole 



ST. DOMLNIU AND ST. FliANCIS. 223 

food, to take away the taste ; how he lay in the snow that 
his unholy passions might be chilled out of him ; how he 
named his body after the meanest beast of burden, and 
commanded his friars to call him by the vilest names. In 
our modern day men sometimes accuse themselves of sins, 
but do not like to have others agree to it. Francis on the 
contrary directed his men to repeat to him very often, 
" Brother Francis, for thy sins thou has deserved to be 
buried in the very bottom of hell." 

Another rule which Francis gave and exemplified was 
the rule of obedience. He carried this farther than the 
convent system. There the monks were to obey their 
superior. But his friars were all according to Christ's 
direction to be servants of each other. He delighted to 
obey the merest novice, and would never allow any but 
the lowest honor to be given to himself. He forbade 
anything by which one brother should be singled out, or 
observed more than another, did not want any eccentric 
friars about him ; at the same time he encouraged the 
utmost openness and freedom. Every one of his followers 
should appear just as he was; he would have no con- 
cealment. He rebuked a brother who undertook by signs 
alone to confess his sins. 

But it did not suit Francis to remain quietly in a con- 
vent, even though he might indulge at will in the practice 
of pious austerities. His order was to be a missionary 
order, and he felt that the new manifestation of the life of 
Christ ought not to be shut up in any place. Like his 
divine Master therefore he went about in the villages and 
the cities, preaching the truths of poverty and humility, 
but showing them more eloquently in his mean garb and 
his unwearied help of the poor. His disciples went out 
too. In less than three years more than sixty monasteries 
had been founded under the new rule. In the large cities 
of Italy, the Minor Friars, as they were humbly called, 
might be seen everywhere where there was suffering or 
misery, praying at the pauper's death-bed, carrying bread 
by midnight to the plague-stricken, or passing, bent and 
downcast, along the streets where students and nobles 
thronged, asking an alms for the love of Jesus. 

In the year 12 15, as we before mentioned, Dominic and 



224 ST. DOMINIC AND ST. F11ANCI8. 

Francis met at Rome. Each brought to the Pope a 
delightful testimony, the one an eloquence that recalled 
the Pentecost season of the early Church, the other a life 
that repeated the love of the first disciples. The hearts 
of the two reformers instantly came together, and they 
established a perpetual bond of friendship between their 
orders. Each supplied what the other wanted. 

In 1219, ten years after its foundation, the first general 
chapter of the Order of St. Francis was held near the 
little church which had been his hermitage. Five thousand 
friars came there together to tell of what they had done, 
and to receive new commissions. Some were sent out 
now to distant heathen regions, to the Moors of Africa 
and the Scythians. Francis joined himself to the sixth 
crusade, which was then warring with the infidels upon the 
Nile. Burning with zeal for the conversion of the 
Saracens, he went boldly into their lines, was seized by 
the sentinels, and brought before the Sultan. " I am 
sent," said he, "by the Most High God, to show you and 
your people the way of salvation." The courage which 
he showed and the fiery trials which he offered to pass 
made such an impression upon the Sultan, that, like 
Agrippa, he was almost persuaded to become a Christian. 

But I should fear to fatigue you in rehearsing the various 
and unwearied labors of this singular monk. His jour- 
neys, his charities, his works of wonder and of love, the 
visions which he had, the consolations which came to him ; 
how his Order grew and toiled and flourished, till the 
nobles of the state wete almost ready to worship these 
beggars of the street, and the Pope found his dream 
coming true, that Francis was a pillar of the church. All 
this is recorded by the pious followers who have eulogized 
the saint. 

The most extraordinary event however in the life of 
Francis, which was attested and believed in by a large 
number of excellent witnesses, was his seraphic vision on 
Mount Alverno. I relate it as an instance of credulity 
and imagination characteristic of the Middle Ages. On 
the fifteenth of September, Francis being in prayer on the 
side of the mountain, and in a high state of spiritual exal- 
tation, saw a seraph with six shining wings, blazing with 



ST. DOMINIC AND ST. FRANCIS. 225 

fire, bearing clown from the highest part of the heavens 
towards him, with a most rapid flight. Between his wings 
was a figure of a man crucified, with his hands and feet 
stretched out and fastened to the cross. After Francis 
had meditated some time upon the vision and settled upon 
its spiritual meaning, it disappeared. He discovered then 
that the impression had been left not merely upon his 
soul but upon his body also ; that the crucifix was stamped 
upon his body, and on his hands and feet were the marks 
of the nails, he could see their black heads on one surface 
and their clinched points on the other. In his side, too, 
he found a red and bleeding wound. Francis tried to 
conceal this wonderful vision from his friends, and assumed 
against the custom of his order gloves for his hands and 
stockings for his feet. But he was unable to prevent the 
discovery, and after his death, when the body was exposed, 
the legend runs that thousands of monks and nuns, and of 
common people kissed these miraculous signs of the holy 
imitation of Christ. The Pope in a solemn bull con- 
firmed the fact. And it is on record with the sign manual 
of the infallible head of the Church that St. Francis was 
appointed visibly to restore the crucifixion of the Saviour. 
The story may not be believed by us now, but it is not in 
itself more irrational than many marvels of chairs and 
tables which men of good sense admit to be beyond their 
power to explain. 

The two years which remained after this vision to 
Francis upon the earth were years of prolonged martyrdom 
and heroic endurance. There was no pain that did not 
torment him, there was no privation that he did not meet. 
His eyes were diseased so that sight was nearly gone. 
His limbs refused to bear him. Yet he would still weep 
and kneel, and his answer to God was. "O Lord, I return 
thanks to thee for the pain I suffer. I pray that thou wilt 
add to them one hundred times more, if such be thy holy 
will." He gave as a testament to his friars that they 
should work diligently with their hands, not for personal 
gain, but for the example of industry. He gave directions 
about his burial, that his body should be laid by the side 
of the bodies of criminals on the hangman's hill. When 
his last hour had come, he would have them lay him upon 

*5 



226 ST. DOMINIC AND ST. FRANCIS. 

the ground, and cover him only with an old coat, that he 
might die in the same poverty that he had lived. They 
tell how he gave in this posture his blessing to all his 
weeping followers, and exhorted them with his final breath 
to constant poverty, how he repeated the words of John 
where the passion of Christ is described, how he broke 
out in the words of the one hundred and forty-second 
Psalm, " Domino voce mea clamavi," and as the last sen- 
tence, "Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise 
thy name," fell from his trembling lips, how- softly the 
spirit ceased with him and went away to its heaven. It 
was a solemn sight too, when his body was laid in the 
convent, and the mark of the cross upon it exposed to 
view, to see the reverence and wonder with which crowds 
approached and kissed that poor wasted frame, not merely 
of the poor whom he and his had succored, but of the 
noble who acknowledged here a surpassing sanctity, and 
of the rich, who thus confessed that it was better to 
lay up treasures in heaven than on earth. 

The order of Minor Friars which St. Francis founded 
has come down in history with various names, according 
as the special objects predominated. There are the Con- 
ventual Friars, who dwell in the monasteries together and 
do not wander about, and the Observantins, or Friars who 
keep up the strict rule of their founders. In Paris, the 
Franciscans are called Cordeliers, from the cord which 
they wear. They gave the name to a famous club of the 
revolution. In Spain they are the Bare-footed Friars, and 
the Grey Friars, each of which have had their eminent 
saints. In Italy, the traveler sees everywhere the Capu- 
chin Friars who have swarmed in that land for three 
centuries, distinguished from others by their long beards, 
their grey dress, and the patch on the back, and their 
catacombs of human bones and mummies. Various orders 
of Nuns adopted the rule of Francis ; there were Grey 
nuns, Black nuns, and Capuchin nuns. St. Francis, too, 
as well as St. Dominic, established a third order which 
should do the chief work of the Friar's life, without being 
obliged to take all his vows. And from this third order 
have come the Brothers of Mercy, " Fratres Misericordiav' 
that are celebrated in the accounts of the plague, and 



ST. DOMINIC AND ST. FRANCIS. 227 

may be met in any Italian city, and the Sisters of Charity, 
whom you may see on any Sunday in our cities walking in 
solemn procession to the Catholic churches. 

The increase of the Mendicant Orders in the Middle 
Ages was marvellous beyond conception. Long before 
the Reformation they were counted by thousands of con- 
vents and myriads of monks. The older foundations of 
the Benedictines, the Cistercians, and the Carthusians, 
were wholly eclipsed by the swarm of Friars that now 
darkened all the streets and highways. Five from each of 
the orders were raised to the highest dignity and sat in 
Peter's seat. 

St. Dominic's foundation gave forty-eight cardinals, St. 
Francis' forty-live to the Church, and of the lowest orders 
of the clergy an incredible number were taken from the 
ranks of the Mendicants. The Preaching Friars alone 
are known to have given more than fifteen hundred 
bishops. Echard, in his history of the Order, takes pains 
to give their names and the lives of the most eminent. 

To draw a parallel between these two great religious 
orders in their history and their influence upon the Catholic 
faith, would not be easy. For the separate idea with which 
they set out was not faithfully preserved, more than the 
harmony of their founders was kept. In some places the 
Franciscan became a preacher, and the Dominican a 
beggar, and when each became numerous and powerful, 
their brotherly love was changed to rivalry. By turns 
they shared the Papal power. In the days when heresy 
was most rife, and new theology was casting contempt 
upon the dogmas of the Church, then the Dominican was 
in power. It was his stern voice that declared the sen- 
tence of the tribunal of faith, and he stood by to direct 
when the faggot was lighted. In the region where want, 
and misery, and crime most abounded, where license 
degraded the profession of holiness, and priests were not 
ashamed to partake in all the vices of the world, there the 
Franciscan was omnipresent, the living rebuke to those who 
profaned the memory of the Apostles and the command 
of Christ. In the turbulent provinces of Spain and France, 
when fanatics dared to question the creed of the Fathers, 
there the Preaching Friar was at hand to defend the 



228 ST. DOMINIC AND ST. FRANCIS. 

Catholic faith or to minister its terror. In the luxurious 
and lustful cities of Italy, where priests lived in palaces 
and beggars swarmed along the highway, there the Francis- 
can could show how poverty might be the way of salvation. 

The warfare of the first order was with errors of the 
reason. They set themselves resolutely against all schemes 
and ways for philosophizing about the truth of God. The 
scholars, the doctors, the colleges were their foes, and 
since these could be overthrown only with their own 
weapons, the order of St. Dominic gradually became the 
masters of science and assumed the ancient glory of the 
Benedictines. In less than thirty years after the death of 
the saint the chairs of the University of Paris were in 
possession of his disciples. They became the cham- 
pions in controversy, and the Pope recognized in them 
the organs of the mind of the Church. 

The warfare of the second order was with errors of the 
life. They were the sworn and persevering foes of all 
simony, all luxury, all mammon-worship. They set them- 
selves against lazy priests, who made of the Church a 
pasture to feed in or a spoil to prey upon. To lower the 
standard of clerical gain, to take away the temptation of 
the sacred office, to make the Church of God an enemy, 
and not an ally, of the world, and to bring back the old 
Judean time, this was their substantial aim. They became 
the militia of the Apostolic kingdom. They were the 
rank and file of the Pope's array, who followed its cham- 
pions. He recognized in them the practical force of the 
Church. 

And these two orders, about confirming which the Pope 
hesitated long, became the bulwark of the Papacy in its 
long struggle to keep its acquired supremacy. They were 
allies of Rome against the Church. They stood between 
the Councils and the chair of Peter, between the murmurs 
of bishops and kings and the will of the spiritual sover- 
eign. When dark times came his Holiness could count 
upon them. For the execution of any scheme they were 
his untiring ministers. It was a Dominican who could 
control the elections of Poland, so that none but a Catholic 
ruler should hold sway there. A Franciscan, the great 
Cardinal Ximenes, was the ruler behind the throne in the 



ST. DOMINIC AND ST. FRANCIS. 229 

Court of Ferdinand and Isabella. These Mendicants were 
everywhere, in the palace, in the tavern, in the village 
church, and in the secret assembly. Their hands guided 
the pens of statesmen, their eyes watched the plots of 
conspirators, their cunning threatened the schemes of the 
ambitious. Under the white cowl of the Dominican there 
was a stern soul that knew no yielding or compromise, and 
counted no means too hard to compass its end. Under 
the grey robe of the Minor Friar there was a patience, an 
energy and a faith that made him the most dangerous of 
foes. If the first became a victor and a judge for the 
Holy See, to sit in its courts and to sentence its criminals, 
the second became a spy of the Holy See, to discover the 
false dealings of the world and the Church, and make due 
report thereof. The terror of the one followed hard upon 
the presence of the other. 

The mendicant orders became the pillars of the Papacy. 
But they have been the bane of freedom, of light, and of 
progress, since their beginning, and they will ever be. 
They have blocked the pathway of science, they have de- 
graded the soul and the life. By them great men like 
Galileo have been put to silence, by them beggary, and 
idleness, and falsehood have been reconciled to the 
Christian life. A few inventions indeed lay claim to a 
parentage among them. They boast the names of Swartz 
and Roger Bacon. 

But these are rare exceptions to the general spirit. The 
chief agency of the Friars has been to debase the mind of 
the world. Their word in the ear of princes has been 
antagonistic to the counsels of wise and enlightened men, 
and where their advice has prevailed there we have seen 
superstition, cruelty, and misery to grow and flourish. In 
Spain, the land of bigotry, of darkness, and fear, we see 
the result of Dominican preaching and power. In Italy, 
the land of pauperism, indolence, and wretchedness, we 
see the issue of Franciscan example. And still the hooded 
friar, with silent step, is the conspicuous object in the 
streets of Madrid and Segovia, and to-day the bare-footed 
and servile beggar who asks your alms in Naples or Rome 
is reverenced by the multitude as a holy man. 

It is this result of their systems that reacts upon the 



230 ST. DOMINIC AND ST. FEANCIS. 

lives of the founders, that makes Southey, who mourned 
over desolate Spain, describe St. Dominic as a monster, 
and falsely attribute to him the cruelties of the Inquisi- 
tion which he never invented ; that makes a grave American 
doctor present St. Francis as a hideous impostor and 
hypocrite, with no shadow of proof for the charge. These 
men were not certainly faultless. But candid historians 
admit that they have better claim to sainthood for their 
personal worth than many whose labor for man has been 
of more avail. A Protestant might wish that the zeal, the 
trust, and the single-mindedness of the one, with the forti- 
tude, the charity, and the self-sacrifice of the other, were 
more common among those who abhor the ministry of 
these men on earth, that their evangelical spirit might 
appear more in those comfortable places, where a luxurious 
and worldly life casts dishonor upon the faith and the 
life of Christ. When the Church is turned to defend 
oppression and pamper the vices of the great it should 
cast no stone at such as Dominic and Francis. 



COPEUNICUS. 231 



IX. 

COPERNICUS AND HIS WORK* 

" The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth 
His handiwork." Psalm xix, 1. 

In our day the .grand utterance of the old Hebrew song 
has been cynically denied, and the professor before his 
class has insisted that the heavens do not declare the glory 
of the Lord, but only the glory of Copernicus and Kepler. 
A foolish cavil, not true, and scarcely quaint. For the 
thought of Copernicus and Kepler has brought grander 
evidence of Divine order in the Universe, and made God 
more conspicuous in the phenomena of sun and stars. 
The great astronomers have been true prophets of the Lord 
in their demonstrations. They have made the heavens 
Lell more than a marvel, and have opened secrets which 
were hidden from the ancient Psalmist. And no one 
would be quicker to repel any robbing of the Divine 
Providence in the way of sun and planets for the praise of 
even the wisest men, than the modest doctor who gave the 
truth of the celestial world. 

Who was this wonderful man, so audaciously suggested 
as a rival, if not a substitute for the Almighty ? The 
occasion of his four hundredth birthday makes it a fit time 
to speak of him, of the work which he did, and of his 
influence upon the following ages. Few of the great men 
of the world are as little known as he in personal life; 
and the vague impressions which most persons have of his 
spirit and character are far from correct. Many suppose 
that he was a bold adversary of priests and the Church. 
That he was not ; he was an officer of the Church himself, 

* A Sermon preached on the four hundredth anniversary of Coper- 
nicus' birth, March 2, 1873, in the Unitarian Church, Ann Arbor, 
Michigan. 



232 COPERNICUS. 



and never denied the faith. Some imagine that, like 
Galileo, he was persecuted for his opinions, and suffered 
reproach, and loss and pain. Not so ; he was honored 
by the Church, and no anathema was upon his name. He. 
is classed carelessly with Luther and the Reformers ; but 
Luther and the Reformers ridiculed, despised and hated 
him. Copernicus was a grand man, a noble man, and a 
prophet too ; but he was not a martyr, not a combatant, 
not a man called to fight or to die for his faith. His life 
was pleasant and prosperous, and his death was tranquil. 
He escaped the fate which came upon his followers and 
disciples. 

No complete biography of Copernicus, so far as I know, 
has been written in English, and very few sketches of him 
are to be found in periodicals, old or new. A Latin life 
of him was published by the famous astronomer Gassendi 
more than two hundred years ago, and within the last half 
century several German lives of him have appeared, the 
most complete one by Dr. Hipler, three or four years since. 
The introduction to most astronomical treatises contains a 
short notice of the father of the modern science ; yet 
withal Copernicus is hardly better known to students than 
the Pagan astronomers Ptolemy and Hipparchus. He 
was born in the city of Thorn, in that part of Poland 
which now belongs to Prussia, on the nineteenth of Feb- 
ruary, 1473.* His father was a wealthy and enterprising 
merchant of that city, and his mother belonged also to the 
prominent family of Watselrede. Her brother was the 
Bishop of Ermeland. The child had his father's name, 
" Niklas Kopernigk," Latinized afterwards, according to 
the fashion of educated men, into "Nicolaus Copernicus." 
His early education was in the best schools, and at 
eighteen he was a student in the University of Cracow, at 
that time one of the famous Universities of Europe, es- 
pecially by its scientific teachings. Here Copernicus was 
biased towards mathematical and astronomical studies, 
mainly no doubt by the fascinating lessons of Bradjewski, 
a rare man of science. After four years spent in this 
University, he came back to his home, to receive from his 

* Old Style, corresponding to March 2d, New Style. 



COPJSHNICUS. 233 



uncle the appointment of Canon in the cathedral of 
Frauenburg. But the rule required that all Canons should 
have a degree either in law, theology or medicine. 
Copernicus preferred the law, and accordingly went for a 
three years' course to Bologna in Italy, where was the 
great Catholic Law School, which had been famous for 
some hundreds of years. The law was a very important 
profession in those days, in the Church, especially for one 
who had to advise and aid the Bishop in questions of 
jurisdiction, and in the disputes which rose between the 
Bishops and the Barons. But the scientific passion was 
strong in the soul of Copernicus, and his acquaintance at 
the University with a Dominican monk who was versed in 
Astronomy fostered this passion. His life at Bologna 
was not altogether happy. His means gave out. A 
brother, who followed him to Bologna, added to the burden 
of his expense. He had to give lessons, and at the age 
of twenty-seven was a lecturer on mathematics in Rome, 
to large audiences. He was forced to return for a time to 
Prussia; but his stay there was short. He was soon back 
in Bologna, as a student of Greek, as well as of Law ; and 
then, from 1501 to 1505, was for four years a student of 
Medicine in the University of Padua, which was as famous 
in that branch of knowledge as the University of Bologna 
in the Law. For some years after that time, he was the 
adviser and private physician of his uncle, keeping up all 
the time his astronomical studies. When his uncle died, 
in 15 12, he returned to Frauenburg, of which he was 
Canon, and there livdd quietly for many years as student 
and physician, gieatly trusted by the successive Bishops. 
When the Bishop Maurice died in 1537, Copernicus, at 
this time, sixty years of age, was one of the four candi- 
dates named to succeed him. Another was chosen, yet 
Copernicus remained his special friend and medical at- 
tendant, as he was also of other bishops. His quiet life 
continued until the year 1543, when, on the twenty-fourth 
of May, at the age of seventy, he died. On that day, the 
first printed copy of his great work was placed in the 
hands of the dying man. 

This great work, De Revolutionibus Orbium Caelestium, 
was finished as early as 1530, thirteen years before the 



234 COPERNICUS. 



death of the author, remaining in manuscript all that time, 
as some say, on account of the author's modesty, as others 
think, because he dared not risk the publication of what 
might be charged with heresy. Not till the year before he 
died, did Copernicus consent to give his work to the 
printer. It was a shrewd device of his to dedicate it to 
Pope Paul III, forestalling so its possible condemnation. 
The Pope accepted the Dedication, and was flattered by 
the compliment. Luther and Melancthon, on the contrary, 
vehemently denounced the book. Luther in his Table 
Talk, calls Copernicus an " upstart astrologer," a fool, 
who wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy, 
and deny the word of Joshua, who commanded the sun to 
stand still and not the earth. Melancthon laments that 
such a clever dreamer should try to show his genius in 
attempting to deny what is evident to ever}'' man who has 
his eyes open, and what is certainly the doctrine of revela- 
tion. Possibly the sentences of these reformers were 
embittered by the fact that Copernicus stayed in the 
Catholic Church, and even, as it was supposed, suggested 
a work composed by his friend the Bishop of Kulm, called 
the Antilogicon, which exposed the errors of Luther. He 
had also won over a scholar of the Reformers, Rheticus, 
who became his enthusiastic admirer, and afterwards 
editor of his great work. Doubtless personal feeling had 
a large share in the vituperations of the Reformers. This 
great work on the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies, is 
the work by which Copernicus is known in history, and on 
which his fame rests. He wrote other works, some of 
which have been published, and some of which still re- 
main in manuscript. There is a work on Trigonometry, 
and another on Money, and another entitled the Moral, 
Rural and Amatory Letters of the Scholar Theophylact, a 
singular book for an ecclesiastic to write. It is probable 
that some of the treatises which he wrote are lost ; for in 
those many years, one-third part of which, according to 
Gassendi, were given to study, he must have had much 
time for the use of his pen. His books were written in 
Latin, but the language of his correspondence was often 
in German. 

The new doctrine, and the important doctrine, of the 



COPERNICUS. 235 



great work of Copernicus, which gives it peculiar signifi- 
cance, was its doctrine of the movements of the heavenly 
bodies around the central sun. Heretofore, from time 
immemorial, and always in the Christian Church, the 
theory had been that the earth was in the centre and im- 
movable, and that the heavens and heavenly bodies re- 
volve around the earth. This was the accepted fact, the 
basis of calculation, and affirmed in the Scripture, as well 
as proved to the eyes of men. Sunrise and sunset seemed 
to show the movement of the heavens, and the appear- 
ance and disappearance of stars and planets were evidence 
beyond dispute that the firmament revolved above the 
heads of men. The thought and study of Copernicus led 
him to believe that this was an error, that the earth itself 
was only a planet, that all the apparent motions could be 
better accounted for by supposing the sun in the centre, 
and arranging the revolutions of the other wandering stars 
about the source of light. This is the one striking idea 
of the book of Copernicus. He did not discover the laws 
of planetary motion ; that was reserved for Kepler. He 
did not discover Gravity ; that is the glory of Isaac New- 
ton. But he told the world that they had been mistaken 
in supposing that this small earth, on which man has his 
dwelling, is the centre of all worlds, which all the rest 
serve and obey. 

It is by no means certain, nevertheless, that this theory 
of the central sun was an original idea of Copernicus. 
Before the birth of Jesus, in one form or another, it had 
been declared by Pagan philosophers. Pythagoras, one 
of the earliest Greek sages, had set the sun in the centre 
of the universe, and taught that the earth had an annual 
motion around it. Philolaus, at a later day, had assigned 
to the earth a double rotation, around the sun and around 
its own axis, though he had strangely sent back the light 
from the sun as i-eflected light, treating this sun as a great 
disk, a vast mirror. Appollonius of Perga, more than two 
hundred years before the Christian era, had told of the 
revolutions of the planets around the sun. It is very 
likely that Copernicus knew of these heathen astronomers 
and their theories, and had profited by them. He had 
certainly read in the work of Martianus Capella that the 



236 COPERNICUS. 



Egyptians believed that Mercury and Venus went around 
the sun, while they went with the sun annually around the 
earth ; and also that Nicetas of Syracuse, had taught a 
revolution of the earth around its axis, to account for day 
and night. By combining these ancient theories, the doc- 
trine of a Central Sun was the natural result. 

This system of the Universe was, as Copernicus pro- 
claimed it, theoretical, the result of thought and mathe- 
matical study more than of practical observation of the 
sun and sky. There is no evidence that Copernicus had 
anything to do with the direct knowledge of the heavens, 
or any experience in the use of instruments. The tele- 
scope had not been invented. The theory was hypothesis 
more than demonstration, but hypothesis sustained by 
ingenious reasoning, changing wholly the presumption. 
The Copernican theory had this at once in its favor, that it 
brought order into the movements of the heavenly bodies, 
and explained many things which the common theory had 
left unexplained. The geocentric astronomy was full of 
vexing difficulties. The stars were in their wrong places, 
the planets were where they ought not to be, eclipses came 
at improper times, and there was general confusion in the 
universe. The new theory set that matter right. The 
universe at once "came to order," when the majestic sun 
took the chair of command. The eccentric movements 
became reasonable, and all the stars now sang together 
instead of singing a discordant song. 

This was the direct work of Copernicus in his theory of 
the Universe. This was what he intended to do. But there 
were other results of his theory which perhaps he did not 
foresee, other things which he did without intending them, 
yet results of grave moment to the world in coming ages. 
Copernicus was not technically a religious reformer, and 
perhaps never dreamed that he should be called so, by the 
men of a future time, more than by men in his own time. 
But he builded better than he knew, and he must be 
classed with the greatest of religious reformers. His ser- 
vice for the faith of man was large and inestimable. And 
we shall best remember him on the anniversary of his 
birth by noting some articles of his service to the world 
in this religious kind. 



COPERNICUS. 237 



I. And, first, the new doctrine of Copernicus, was vir- 
tually a proclamation that the letter of the Bible is not 
to rule the free spirit of men. Literally, the Scripture 
seemed to teach another doctrine. From Genesis to 
Malachi, from the Gospel of Matthew to the Apocalypse 
of John, the whole Divine Word seemed to take for 
granted, if not to assert, that the heavens were migrant 
and wavering, while the earth was fixed in its place. " Of 
old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth," — that was 
the sacred refrain. Did not God create the earth on the 
first day, reserving the lights of the heavens even to the 
fourth day ? Did not the sun stand still at the command 
of the Hebrew leader — an idle order, if the sun were 
always still ? Was not the new theory a denial of prophecy 
and song, which tells of the sun in his "goings," going 
forth, and going up and down, from one end of the 
heavens to the other ? Had not the sun on Hezekiah's 
dial deliberately gone backward? Do we not read of the 
pillars on which the earth is fixed, so stable, so eternal ? 
Does not Habakkuk show the Lord stopping the sun with 
the moon, and making them stay in their habitation ? 
Shall we deny the word of John the Seer, which tells how 
the sun shall cease to appear and give light, while the 
earth shall still continue ? Nay, did not the Divine Mas- 
ter tell of the Lord making " his sun to rise upon the evil 
and the good ?" Surely these words of Scripture shall 
stand against any daring reversion of the place of the 
spheres. 

Copernicus, himself, threw down no defiance to this let- 
ter of the Scripture, but his theory did. His theory said 
virtually, " No matter what the letter of the Bible teaches 
in this thing, we are not to be bound by that, or to be hin- 
dered from any new voice of the spheres by those ancient 
oracles. The scripture is not to control our reason, our 
sense of the fitness of things, what we see of the way of 
God's working or the order of Creation." Galileo's "<? 
pur si muove" of the next century was in the theory of Co- 
pernicus, "I do not care what the Bible says, the earth 
really moves." The declaration and the reception of this 
theory was a revolt from the authority of the written word, 
not only as a dictator of science, but as arbitrary dictator 



238 COPERNICUS. 



of anything. There are those who attempt to make dis- 
tinction in what they call the "province " of Biblical teach- 
ing. They say now, since it has been proved that Biblical 
geography and astronomy and cosmogony are at fault, and 
lead astray, that the Bible was "never intended" to teach 
anything of that sort, and that it is only infallible in what 
it says of moral and religious things and of the kingdom 
of heaven. Such a distinction is wholly arbitrary, and is 
only a poor subterfuge for baffled assumption. The line 
cannot be drawn in Biblical teaching between its truth and 
falsehood, except by enlightened human reason. If the 
letter is to dictate in one thing, or bind reason in one thing, it 
may in all. And when any one asserts that he will not ac- 
cept the account of Creation in Genesis because he does 
not believe that it is true, he may also assert that he will 
not receive the doctrine of the Epistle to the Romans, or 
of the Sermon on the Mount, if these too shall come to 
seem to him not true. Revolt from the dictation of one 
part, is revolt from the dictation of all. Fortunately Co- 
pernicus was saved from that poor and humiliating task to 
which so many of his followers have been drawn or driven, 
astronomers, geologists, chemists and the rest, of attempt- 
ing to harmonize, as they call it, Scripture and Science, to 
give a meaning to Scripture different from its real mean- 
ing, sophisticate its clear statements, to make a day mean 
something else, and a year something else, and black mean 
white ; to get around these difficulties by verbal jugglery. 
That need was not laid upon him. 

2. And kindred to this revolt against bibliolatry, the 
theory of Copernicus was a defiance to the authority of the 
Church. In his time, the Church claimed the right to de- 
fine truth in all branches of human knowledge, to say 
what should be taught and what should be believed. They 
had exercised that right, and in exemplary fashion, for 
loag before Copernicus was born, there had been heretics 
of science, — men burned at the stake for errors far less 
momentous than that of setting the sun in the centre of 
the universe. Copernicus in his book does not apologize 
for this defiance of the Church, or pretend that he is saying 
anything to discredit the authority of the Canons and Coun- 
cils. He asks the Pope to accept and bless his modest book. 



COPERNICUS. 239 



And yet he must have known that his book was an innovation 
upon the teachings of the Church, an assumption of wisdom 
above any which had come from Popes and Councils. 
The old theory of the universe, the Ptolemaic system, had 
been long ago baptised and adopted as the system of the 
Christian Church. It was the orthodox system all over 
the world, as much as any articles of the creeds. The cal- 
endar was based upon it. It was preserved in the system 
of religious feasts and fasts and ritual. It had satisfied 
forty generations. No manual for a revision of the sys- 
tem had been issued, and the novelty was certain to de- 
range the methods of the Church and annul its edicts. 
This Copernican theory virtually said to the Church, 
"Your spiritual wisdom is fallible, and in this great matter 
it has all along been folly. In spite of your divine illumi- 
nation, you have all along been believing a lie, and leaving 
the world to be misled, if not leading the world into dark- 
ness. You have not told to men this great law of the 
Divine order, which to the eye of reason is so clear, and 
to inspired vision ought to have been still clearer and long 
ago visible." The theory of Copernicus not only was a 
sarcasm upon the ignorant Church, but it was a limitation 
of the sway and province of the Church. It said to the 
world, " Here is something which the Church has no busi- 
ness in. The Church tells you about Heaven and God, 
but it does not knoiw and does not inquire, it is not fit to 
know and inquire, into the heavens over your heads or 
into the source of Heat and Light. Do not go to the 
Church to learn how the world is created and upheld. Do 
not go to the Church to get science of any kind. The in- 
struments of human learning are not to be found in con- 
claves of cardinals or in chapter houses. Little do these 
priests know of what the world needs to know concerning 
the laws of matter and motion." Martin Luther's Reform, 
nearly contemporary with the Copernican announcement, 
(for the two great men were only ten years apart in their 
birth, and only three years apart in their dying) was not 
more truly a defiance to the authority of the Church, than 
the treatise on the Revolutions of the Celestial Worlds. 
Though that book was dedicated to a Pope, it really 
burned many Papal Bulls, of the time to come as well as 
of the former time. 



2.\o COPERNICUS. 



3. And the theory of Copernicus was equally efficient 
in subjecting sensual impressio7is to the laws of mind a?id 
thought. What he told seemed to be directly contrary to 
the evidence of the eye. Do we not see the sun rise and 
the sun set ? Do we not see the stars change their places ? 
How absurd, too, to suppose that the earth can turn on an 
axis with all these movable men and things upon it ! When 
it is bottom upwards, will not the things fall off? The 
theory of Copernicus was a direct denial of the daily ob- 
servation and experience of men. It said to them, "Your 
experience is only the aggregation of your obstinate 
ignorance. Your observation is only illusion. What you 
seem to see and feel is not what you really see and feel; 
and if you only reflect you will know that it is so. Math- 
ematical laws are more enduring and trustworthy than the 
conclusions of sense. The evidence of sense is second- 
ary, and never can be the test of the absolute truth of 
things. What men think to be impossible because they 
do not see it or have not seen it, may be the grandest of 
realities." Of course, the common people, and some of 
the wise people, ridiculed the discovery of Copernicus. 
Those solid Nuremberg citizens, with their fat money bags, 
sensible men, who would believe nothing that their eyes 
could not see and their hands handle, said that the man 
who told of the earth turning round was evidently a fool ; 
would he persuade them that this could,be without spilling 
all their warehouses and palaces ? They had a medal struck 
to show up the absurdity. In another city, Copernicus 
became the. hero of a farce, like Socrates in ancient Athens. 
But ridicule could not silence the voice of reason, or 
hinder the theory from making its way. Even if they 
could not see it, men should come to believe it. They 
cannot see it now any more than they could then. The 
sun seems now to move as much as it seemed then to 
move, and the earth to be as much at rest. Yet every 
reasonable man knows that this optical impression is as 
truly illusion as the Maya of the Indian religion. And the 
inevitable inference from this is, that thought and study 
show the truth better than any passing impressions, that 
principles are more to be trusted than pretences and 
shows, and that what is true in the domain of Nature may 
be. equally true in the domain of character and of the soul. 



COPEBNICUS. 241 



4. Another good issue of the Copernican theory is that 
it //// the earth into its proper place, and took it out of its 
false position. Before his time, the Church had taught, 
and men had believed, that there was nothing in the Uni- 
verse so important as the earth, and nothing of much 
importance except the earth and its people ; that God had 
made everything else for the sake of this and men dwelling 
upon it ; that the sun shone by day and the moon by night, 
and the stars from their distances, mainly to give light and 
comfort and blessing to earthly men ; that without the 
earth and men there was really no need of any heavenly 
bodies. The Copernican theory overturned that compla- 
cent assertion, and showed the earth a satellite of the sun 
instead of the sun a satellite of the earth, showed the 
earth obedient, dependent, keeping course according to 
the guidance of its lord in the sky. By the- sure and 
natural inferences which wise men would draw from this 
theory, the other planets would take on an equal dignity, 
and the sun a grander state than all. The earth once 
taken from the centre and made one in a company, the 
questions might come, are not the other worlds the same in 
substance and as high in value as this ? May there not be 
souls to be saved there as well as here? Are not these 
orbs worthy of the Divine care as much as this orb, so 
much smaller than some of the others ? Is not God in 
the sun as much as in the earth ? And is it not pitiful to 
limit the love of the gracious World — Father to a small 
race dwelling in this narrow habitation ? Indirectly, the 
theory of Copernicus is a satire upon the scheme of salva- 
tion iterated in the Churches, which shows the Creator of 
Worlds, who holds the Universe in his hands, planning 
and contriving, like a puzzled mechanic, how he may fix 
the fate of the denizens of one small planet, which is com- 
pelled to move on its way at the will of the central lire. 
The Copernican theory in no wise depreciates man and 
his dignity, or the worth of the earth on which he dwells. 
But it brings this out from its exceptional place, from its 
sad fate to be holden as a sick child in the arms of the 
great Father, and shows it ruled like the rest of the planets, 
by a general beautiful order. Copernicus changed the 
16 



242 COPERNICUS. 



purpose of the Lord in his universe from a poor specialty 
to an end grandly Catholic. 

5. And in general, we may say of the Copernican theory 
that its highest service to religion is in ope?iing the way to 
a true natural theology, and so to a rational theology. It 
was a proclamation that the Divine Order and will are to 
be learned in the laws of the Universe, and not exclusively 
in any particular revelation at any particular time, to any 
particular people, that the God in the world is greater and 
stronger than the God outside of the world or the God of 
any place or nation. The Copernican theory not only 
enlarges the science of the world, and sends the human 
mind off into an infinite field of conjecture and discovery, 
but it enlarges also the worship of the world, and teaches 
men how to pray and how to praise. It not only harmon- 
izes the system of the planets and explains the beautiful 
vicissitude of the days and the nights, the months and the 
years, the seasons with seed time and harvest, the heat and 
cold, and moist and dry, rounding all in a majestic sym- 
metry, which even includes the erratic and eccentric flights 
of comets and meteors, but it harmonizes as well the sys- 
tem of religions, shows that the ancient sun-worship was 
an almost divine foretoken of what science justifies, and 
that the adoration of the elements is only the instinctive 
way of finding God in his works. The Copernican theory 
rescues the faiths and the prayers of the heathen from 
blank darkness and destruction of soul, and suggests that 
God has made of one blood all the nations of men to feel 
after him and to find him, though he may not be far from 
any one of them. For the religions of men it does the 
same work that it does for the planets in their orbits, 
gathers them all as parts of the family around the central 
sun, as brethren and sisters together, not the greater to 
tyrannize over the less, or the stronger to rule the weaker, 
but all in balanced rhythm of movement to repeat the 
same hymn to the Lord of all, 

" Forever singing as they shine, 
The hand that made us is divine." 

Not at once was the theory of Copernicus accepted. 
Not easily did it make its way against blindness and preju- 



COPERNICUS. 243 



dice and ignorance and bigotry, of the world and of the 
Church. It had days of bitterness to pass before it became 
the recognized rule of the celestial order. Brave men 
suffered pains in confessing it, and timid men lost their 
honor in denying it while they believed it. But it made its 
way in spite of all hindrance, for it was true. From time 
to time in these last ages, fantastic, half-crazed dreamers 
have ventured to question it, and to affirm the old dogma 
of a stable earth in the centre of a wandering sky. No 
one now even listens to such folly. The Catholic now 
is earnest to claim the glory of Copernicus, and is almost 
ready to write his name as the name of a saint. The nar- 
rowest theology dares not deny what Copernicus, and Kep- 
ler, and Newton, and Leibnitz, and Laplace, and how 
many more, have demonstrated as the system of the Uni- 
verse ; though the shrewd preachers must fear and must 
see that it is the prophecy of doom to all narrow limit of 
salvation to a mechanical process, or to a chosen few in 
the infinite myriads of men and of worlds. The geocen- 
tric theology is fated to go where the geocentric astronomy 
has gone ; and men in future ages will marvel that the 
multitude were held so long to believe a scheme which nar- 
rowed the love of the Almighty Lord, and the work of his 
Holy Spirit, to a handful of souls on the fragment of one 
of the innumerable worlds. 



244 MABTIN LUTHER. 



X. 

MARTIN LUTHER. 

The picture of the sixteenth century reminds me of a 
description which I have read somewhere of the show in the 
amphitheatre in the time of the Caesars. Those vast 
rings of benches, rising tier above tier, are all filled with 
a careless, restless, excited throng, thousands and tens 
of thousands, the wise, the rich, the gay, the haughty, 
with the lowest, fiercest, most worthless, of the rabble. 
The Emperor and his household, his vassal kings, the 
priests, and the soothsayers, have all come to see the 
strange games of that arena. The cheaper combats of 
beasts are soon over. The gladiator enters alone and 
unclothed to match singly his wild foes, to meet first the 
lion and the tiger, and then his more terrible antagonist, 
man. What strifes arise in that great throng of myriads 
concerning that weak, unaided man! Will he conquer! 
Shall we attend to him, or let him die ! But as he looks 
proudly around and his quick blows fall with no show of 
fear, doubt is changed to wonder, and they begin to sym- 
pathize. All eyes then are turned upon him, and all tongues 
are hushed. The priest and the monarch are captive to 
the spell of such daring and valor. The gladiator becomes 
a hero. 

So do I see the nations grouped around in this theatre 
of the sixteenth century, in splendid array, kings, and 
cardinals, scholars, philosophers, poets, races of the South 
and the North, with the vast throngs of restless masses, 
sitting, range on range, in the theatre of the world. The 
inferior games are over, the petty strifes of adjoining 
states. Now enters the arena, where lions have been 
fighting, the figure of a monk, solitary, unarmed, un- 
heralded. But his step is firm, he quails not before that 
sea of faces, he springs to his battle, he strikes quick and 



MARTIN LUTHER. 245 

ringing blows. They must stop from their wrangling, for 
a hero is here ; one who can meet calmly the lowering 
brow of the priest, and fling back to the kings that would 
judge him, his brave defiance. A spiritual gladiator stands 
in the arena of the world. With the nations looking down 
upon him Luther waits to do battle for freedom. 

In the story of the Reformation, Martin Luther must 
ever be the central figure. No nice criticism of temper or 
motive, no new discovery of the worth of other men, can 
dispossess him of that honorable rank. His name has 
been for more than three centuries the representative 
name of the great religious movement, and it will continue 
to be forever. It may be shown that Melancthon was 
more learned, that Carlstadt was more zealous, that 
Zwingle was purer, that Calvin was more severely logical, 
but Luther will still stay as the Achilles of the host which 
made war upon Rome. His life will be an epitome of the 
History of Reform. All the rest, to gain significance, 
must be grouped around him. He is as central and as 
essential as the figure of the Christ in the picture of the 
Last Supper. 

Martin Luther was born at the little town of Eisleben, 
in Saxony, on the tenth day of November, 1483, at eleven 
in the evening. His father was Hans, or John Luther, a 
poor laborer of the most common class ; his mother, 
Margaret Linderman, was a house-servant, pure and pious. 
There were other children older than Martin. He received 
his name from the Saint on whose day he was baptised. 
This necessary rite of baptism was administered within a 
few hours of his birth. The first years of the child gave 
no special indications of any future greatness. His father 
removed to Mansfeld, the ducal town, where he took up 
the occupation of a miner, and improved thereby his 
worldly fortunes. Martin was taught to read and write, to 
say his prayers, and to be respectful before his elders. 
Sometimes the monks of the neighboring convent or 
oftener the schoolmaster came to visit the miner in his 
home ; and at such times the young boy who listened so 
well was not neglected. The wise parents did not forget 
the maxim of Solomon, and wholesome chastisement was 
not excluded from their system of training. Luther tells 



246 MABTIN LUTHER. 

how his mother beat him till the blood came, when he 
took one day a poor little nut, and how he was so afraid of 
his father that he ran up the chimney for refuge when he 
had accidentally disobeyed the strict paternal rule. 

But Luther wanted a better education than Mansfeld 
could give him. At Magdeburg on the Elbe, were the 
charity schools in which the pupils paid their board and 
tuition from what they could collect in going round from 
house to house, or could earn in the churches. Luther 
and his bosom friend John Reinick, set out on foot at the 
age of fourteen, with knapsacks on their backs, sticks in 
their hands, and tears on their cheeks, to enter on this 
humiliating and hard course of training. Their custom at 
Magdeburg was to sing twice in a week under the windows 
of the richer citizens, and to assist in the Church choirs. 
Luther did not like very much this way of begging, and 
did not succeed in it so well as his companion. After a 
year's trial he took up his line of march to Eisenach, 
where some of his relatives lived, to try his fortune there. 
His first song here under the windows of a fine mansion 
in the chief street of the village proved to be a very for- 
tunate song. The lady of the house, dame Ursula Cotta, 
took compassion upon the poor lad, called him in, placed 
him at her table, heard his tale, and became his patron 
and second mother. With what she did for him and what 
he did for himself, he was able to study four years in the 
Convent school of Eisenach. The master of this school, 
Trebonius, was a humorist and a fine scholar, though he 
was a Carmelite friar. Luther became one of his favorite 
pupils. Trebonius could predict eminence for this boy, 
from his natural gifts, not less than from his industry and 
resolution. His fine voice was beautiful in speech and 
rich in song. None mastered more easily the intricacies 
of grammar, none used more aptly the rules of rhetoric ; 
and his poetical studies were followed by poetical attempts. 
These four years at Eisenach were of the highest moment 
in the preparation of his future career. Luther referred 
always with gratitude to the gifts and character of the 
good lady Cotta. He wrote on the margin of his German 
Bible a couplet which he heard for the first time at her 
table on a comment on the thirty-first chapter of the 
Proverbs : 



MARTIN LUTHER. 247 

" Nothing more clear than woman's love, 
To him who may its blessing prove." 

Her son became afterwards his fellow-pupil and his 
favorite disciple. Luther always spoke with affection of 
"my dear Eisenach, where I was myself once a poor men- 
dicant, seeking my bread at people's houses." 

From Eisenach the young student at the age of eighteen, 
went to the University of Erfurt. His father, now in easy 
circumstances, consented to his wish for a larger educa- 
tion in this famous school. He saw already in his son a 
magistrate and a lawyer, which was the position of in- 
fluence in his view. But Luther himself studied with a 
different view. He was drawn on not by professional 
ambition, but by the love of knowledge ; and he preferred 
those branches which disciplined mind and charmed fancy, 
to the merely useful knowledge which was the stepping- 
stone to power. The classic writers, Cicero, Virgil, and 
Livy, relieved his severe labor in the dialectics of the 
schoolmen. But the studies which he most prized were 
those of theology and music. " Music," says he, " is the 
art of the prophets ; it is the only other art which, like 
theology, can calm the agitation of the soul, and put the 
devil to flight." He learned to play on the guitar and the 
flute, and when his ascetic fervors came on, these instru- 
ments could sweeten and sanctify his hours of penance. 
But his favorite haunt was the library of the convent. 
Here, among other literary treasures, he found the Bible, 
newly printed in attractive dress. It was in Latin, but 
Latin had already become familiar to him as his mother 
tongue. He read in this book with delight. It opened a 
new world before him. All that he had been learning 
seemed worthless before this high wisdom. He longed to 
own the treasure. His instructors, eminent as they were in 
literature and science, seemed small to him when he com- 
pared them to Moses and Paul. He began now to feel 
the emotions of a religious nature, to be stirred by self- 
reproach, and to suspect under the leading of the Eccle- 
siast the vanity of the things he had before loved. First 
his own sickness, and then the sudden death of his 
nearest friend, confirmed his resolution to forsake the 
world and live for God. 



2 48 MARTIN LUTHER. 

The vow which he made when he saw his friend struck 
down at his side by lightning, he was not slow to execute. 
And though he had just taken his degrees as Master of 
Philosophy and Art, he renounced them ; sent back to the 
University his gown and ring, the signs of his dignity, gave 
a parting musical entertainment to his friends, and on the 
seventeenth of July, 1505, in his twenty-first year, entered 
the Augustinian convent at Erfurt. Under his arm was a 
little package, containing merely a copy of Plautus and 
Virgil. He knocked at the convent door. " Open, in 
God's name," said he. " What do you want," replied the 
porter. "To consecrate myself to God." "Amen!" 
answered the brother, and admitted him. 

It was not a pleasing step to Luther's friends. The pro- 
fessors of the University did not like to lose a pupil so 
brilliant, and they sent his classmates to remonstrate with 
him ) he would not see them. His father, indignant and 
disappointed at the failure of his ambitious schemes, 
answered angrily the letter which Luther wrote to inform 
him of his act. But the resolve had passed ; the step 
was taken. There was no yielding in this man's nature. 
The gifted student went straight to his cloistral cell, and 
for two years practised there the austerities of monastic 
life, taking upon himself its most menial offices, sweeping 
the cells, opening the doors, and going round through the 
neighboring country to beg for the convent. But they 
tell, nevertheless, of the relaxation of his ascetic pain, 
how in the small choirs of the brethren, his fine tenor 
voice would lead the Gregorian chant, how the hymns of 
the Church fell sweetly from his lips, and how after 
preaching to the shepherds, he would lie at the foot of 
some tree and be lulled to sleep by their simple pipings. 

Like the fathers of the Catholic Church Luther had his 
demoniac experiences in this period of his life. The 
devil visited him, and sometimes he was tempted to feel 
that the devil possessed him. But this early experience 
was made harder when he was admitted to the priesthood. 
In 1507, when he was twenty-four years old, he finished 
his novitiate, took his vows and celebrated as priest his 
first mass. It was a solemn time for him and he almost 
sank under the burden of this great change. He felt as 



MARTIN LUTHER. 249 

if all faith had left him and all sin were upon him. His 
father's presence at the ceremony was an additional trial, 
for he knew that his father was vexed at the step he had 
taken. He hardly dared to repeat the prayers at the altar. 
And it touched him closely, when at the dinner which 
followed, his father asked, " Is it not written in the Word, 
that a man should honor his father and mother ? " The 
joy which the peasant showed at his ordination did not 
bring joy to his soul. For now he plunged deeply into 
the mazes of the doctrine about sin. The rector of the 
convent, Staupitz, was a believer in the moral inability 
of man, and teaching of that kind could not raise the 
soul of the young priest, already too prone to accuse him- 
self. He kept brooding over his lost and ruined state till 
he became weak and sick. Once they found him lving on 
the floor of the cell apparently dead. Only music could 
drive out the demon that tormented him. The sweet 
notes of his flute would arouse his better nature, and 
make him for the time forget his pains and his sins. In 
these inner torments he did not find much sympathy. The 
monks of the sixteenth century were not much troubled 
by the visits of demons, and they tried to argue away the 
vain fears of their brother. But the nature of Luther was 
not one to be reasoned with. Only one great doctrine 
could give him peace, and to the elaboration and clear 
vision of that doctrine his soul groaned and travailed. 

Luther tells, himself, how early this great characteristic 
doctrine of ''justification by faith" had broken upon his 
soul. When a schoolboy he was struck by the phrase in 
St. Paul's Epistle, " the justice of God is revealed by 
faith." And when the terrors of the law began to rise 
before him, and the cruelty of God to seem manifest, this 
doctrine of faith came in to relieve his perplexity. He 
saw in this the solution of his doubt. If he had been 
attacked by idle terrors, if he fell into despair, if he feared 
for his salvation, and trembled at God's justice, it was 
because he did not believe ; in want of faith, he saw the 
source of all his misery. But in the light of faith the justice 
of God seemed a different thing, not part of vindictive 
wrath, but part of abounding mercy. It was glorious to 
think upon it. Joy came again to the poor monk's soul. 



250 MARTIN LUTHETt. 



The nightly visions of demons ceased. He stood gladly 
at the altar. He could now show to sinners the way of 
salvation. God no longer seemed to him a great tyrant, 
damning the world for its hereditary curse and its in- 
numerable transgressions. He no longer felt his soul 
abhorring the Ruler of the Universe. The words of Jesus 
came to comfort him. "Believe and thou shalt be saved." 
These seemed to him to make repentance reasonable. 
We shall see hereafter how Luther drew out this doctrine 
and how it differed from the Catholic doctrine. But even 
in this early stage of his history he had come to look upon 
it as the central power of the creed. He had already 
gone back from the later fathers to Augustine, and he 
could see no way of escape for the sinner through works, 
whether of ritual or of righteousness, no salvation except 
by faith in Christ, before he departed on his mission to 
Rome. 

This visit to Rome was a most weighty event for his 
future career. It revealed to him a new feature of the 
ecclesiastical state. Rome and its sanctity had long been 
in his dreams and he had yearned towards that city with 
the enthusiasm of a pilgrim. Rome was venerable to him 
by its classic memories, as the home of those sweet poets 
whose verses shared with the Bible his attachment. It 
was more venerable as the fountain head of Catholic doc- 
trine and faith. In Rome, to Luther's dream, the joy and 
desire of the whole world seemed to be centred. Occasion 
arose for a messenger to be sent to Rome to settle some 
difficulties between the Augustine order and the Pope. 
Staupitz made Luther his messenger, thinking probably it 
might distract him from morbid thoughts and cheer his 
sombre musings. The journey, cheerfully undertaken, 
did not turn out quite as he expected. Luther carried 
across the Alps his own idea of the monastic state, the 
ancient idea, the ascetic idea, the idea of penance, fasting, 
poverty, and earnestness in prayer ; but he did not see his 
idea anywhere realized. He found good cheer and great 
hospitality, but not much piety or communion with God. 
He heard all along of the great revenues of the convents, 
the thousands of dollars which came from rents, from 
masses, from boarders in the house, but not of their gifts 



MARTIN LUTHER. 251 

to the poor, or their sacrifices in the Saviour's spirit. In- 
stead of the rude altars before which it seemed becoming 
that monks should kneel, he saw marble, alabaster, mosaic, 
jewelry and gold, all things rich and rare on the shrines of 
the self-denying brethren. In Milan, the first great Italian 
city which he reached, he was amazed at the luxury and the 
worldliness all around him. It was Paganism baptised. 
He had never seen Paganism before. The churches 
seemed strange. He could not understand the mass which 
they chanted, for a miracle had commanded them to use 
the service of Ambrose instead of the missal of Gregory, 
which was the regular Catholic service. He was shocked, 
too, at the profane haste with which the mysteries of faith 
were passed over, at the indifference of the priests to their 
sacred office. 

His journey through Italy was sad and disheartening. 
Its beautiful skies were dark to his sight. Its transparent 
air was heavy upon his breast. He seemed to be travelling 
in pestilence. He could not breathe at night the free air. 
At Bologna he fell sick and was only restored by the 
thought of the justice of God through faith. When he 
reached Rome there was little to reassure him. He found 
that religion was the last thing that man cared for in that 
city. The warlike Julius, intent upon expelling the French 
from Italy, had no time to attend to monkish troubles. 
The cardinals and bishops seemed more concerned to 
enrich themselves and to gather works of art than to re- 
member the service of God. They loved the Pagan better 
than the Christian Latin. Nowhere could Luther find 
any sympathy with his doctrine of faith. The priests and 
the monks boasted of their unbelief. At the very altar 
they declared the bread and wine to be that and nothing 
more. A fortnight Luther stayed at Rome, indignant and 
disgusted at all which he saw. Rome could henceforth no 
longer be the holy place of his dreams. Her dignity was 
lost for him. All her splendor, luxury and wonder, her 
rulers on horseback, her kneeling crowds, her vast cathe- 
drals, could have no charm for him. It was hollow and 
vain. And he went back to Germany with a desolate 
heart, for his idol had been broken. But the visit was 
not useless. " I would not," he says in his table talk, 



252 MARTIN LUTIIEB. 

"for one hundred thousand florins have missed seeing 
Rome, for I should always have feared then that I was 
unjust to the Pope in what I said about him." 

Scarcely had Luther returned to his convent when he 
received the appointment of Professor in the new Univer- 
sity at Wittemberg. This had been established a few 
years before by Frederic, Elector of Saxony, a prince of 
liberal culture, of sincere piety, and zealous in the work of 
elevating the people. He sought in the various convents 
for suitable men to fill his chairs ; and among others the 
monk Luther was represented to him as a scholar of rare 
promise. The invitation was so pressing that it seemed 
like a command. Luther could not refuse it. He would 
have preferred to teach theology, the queen of the arts, 
but the department assigned to him was that of philosophy, 
and the master of philosophy was Aristotle, whom he 
could not love. His furniture for the new charge was 
extremely meagre. He had hardly a change of raiment, 
and his library was confined to a few ascetic books, some 
Latin volumes, a few of Aristotle's treatises, a Concord- 
ance and two Bibles. 

To this appointment of Professor was joined that of 
Town Preacher, so that he had all classes for his hearers. 
Luther was frightened at his burden of duty, and would 
fain have escaped it. " I shall not live three months 
under it," said he. "Very well," said his former master, 
" if you die, 'twill be in the service of the Lord, a noble 
sacrifice!" His labors now became intense and unremit- 
ting. He was constant in the class-room ; and yet his 
sermons were regularly heard in the royal chapel, in the 
college church and in the monastery at Wittemberg, to 
which he belonged. These sermons were not hasty pro- 
ductions, for severe private study preceded his public 
efforts. His sermons were in one respect peculiar. They 
neglected the schoolmen and the creeds, and went to the 
Scriptures for their material and their inspiration. Though 
he had read the great summary of Thomas Aquinas, the 
Golden Doctor, he preferred to draw from the Epistles of 
Paul. His preaching was in all respects remarkable. His 
fine voice was never more sonorous and impressive than 
when it repeated the strong phrases of the Epistle to the 



MARTIN LUTHER. 253 

Romans. His animated tone, his forcible gesture, his 
sharp emphasis, and his evident sincerity, all told largely 
in the public applause. His lectures were a place of 
general resort. Eminent doctors pronounced his explana- 
tions of the Scriptures to be the most luminous of any 
which had been heard for a century. The midnight oil 
which he habitually burned was not spent in vain ; but 
from the vigils of the student came forth a light which 
astonished the wisest. Luther loved his task, and bore 
modestly his fame, glad only to open to others the myste- 
ries of that Word which was so grand to his soul. In 
these close studies of his professorship, in these Biblical 
sermons, he was laying the foundations of his power as a 
Reformer, and preparing for his service of controversy, 
his defence of God's Word against the devices and cor- 
ruptions of men. Already his eminence was predicted, 
and he was praised by famous men. 

On the sixteenth of October, 15 12, St. Luke's day, 
Luther received the degree of Doctor of Divinity before a 
large assembly. The insignia of his new honor were 
offered by the Archdeacon, now at once his superior, his 
admirer and his friend, but in a few years to become the 
object of his bitterest scorn and contempt. Luther was 
now twenty-nine years old, in the full vigor of his powers 
and ready for any service. 

The immediate motive to the Reformation was the sale 
of Indulgences. These had been sanctioned by many 
Popes before Leo, and the whole system of payments to 
the Church for sins committed was kindred with them. 
For it seems reasonable that sins which may be released 
for a consideration in money should be released in ad- 
vance as much as in the past. If the offence committed 
has its price, there is no reason why future offences should 
not be so anticipated. But Leo carried the system farther 
than previous Popes. His luxurious schemes of life, his 
gigantic literary and artistic plans, required more revenue 
than the ordinary contributions of the Christian world. 
St. Peter's Church was yet to be finished, and there was 
no limit there to lavish expense if the design of the archi- 
tect were carried out. It happened, too, at this time that 
the Archbishop of Magdeburg and Mayence, Albert, in 



254 MARTIN LUTHER. 

whose diocese Luther lived, was a man of luxurious life 
and great needs, wanting more than all his revenues to 
meet his expenses, and yet owing vast sums to Rome as 
the arrears of unpaid tithes. The indulgences proclaimed 
by the Pope, then, would meet his sanction as a means of 
relieving himself of an inconvenient demand. If Luther's 
story may be trusted, Albert and the Pope were partners 
in the scheme and shared alike in its profits. 

Luther had heard before with amazement and anger 
that such abomination was allowed. But he was a Catholic 
still, and he did not feel called upon to interfere in what 
he had no personal share. But early in the summer of 
15 17, he heard that the accursed thing had come nigh to 
him, and that in some of the towns around Wittemberg a 
monk, by name John Tetzel, was trafficking in sins and 
souls in the name of the Holy Church. He had known 
the character and spirit of this man, his shameless licen- 
tiousness, his bold profanity, his irreverent trifling with 
sacred mysteries, his insolent dictation and abuse of those 
who stood in his way. From such a man, however eloquent 
and ingenious, no good could be expected. It seemed fit 
that he should be selected for a base and blasphemous 
service. His expressions were repeated to Luther ; the 
absurd and noisy pomp with which he entered the towns 
with a crier before him announcing that God had come, 
with long and showy processions of priests, and monks, 
and nuns, of magistrates and scholars, with flaunting ban- 
ners, and lighted candles, and the red cross, and the 
pontifical bull on its cushion, profaning by showy mockery 
the works of Divine Grace in the pardon of sinners. The 
preacher of righteousness could not be silent when such 
abuse was acted. He had disciples to warn and he had a 
flock to protect. He preached therefore at Wittemberg, 
warning his hearers not to deceive themselves by any such 
follies, and not to touch the pledges of unlawful pardon. 
He wrote in remonstrance to the bishop of his diocese, 
and to Archbishop Albert, beseeching them to heed and 
stop this scandal to all piety. His words were terse and 
clear, and spoke a truth not to be mistaken. No answer 
came from the Archbishop, since it was not likely that a 
partner in the traffic would try to prevent it. 



MARTIN LUTHER. 255 

Luther began to see that the case was pressing. The 
bearer of Indulgences was now at Juterboch, eight miles 
from Wittemberg, and the people flocked out to meet him 
and to purchase his wares. The confessionals at Wittem- 
berg were deserted. The excitement for Tetzel and his 
traffic increased. It was a critical time. Luther took 
counsel of God, retired to his cell, and spent many days 
there in preparing a sermon which should put a stop to the 
affair. On the appointed day the church was crowded. No 
one could discover from the earnestness with which Luther 
joined in the prayers and chanting that he had such daring 
words to speak. His devotion to Catholic faith never was 
more evident than when he was ready to throw out 
defiance to Catholic practice. 

We cannot here give even an abstract of the positions 
of this striking sermon, which really contains the germs 
of all Luther's heresies. It is enough to say that it gave 
the lie to all the pretensions of Tetzel, declared that sin 
could only be pardoned by God, and his free grace, that 
nowhere in the word of God was it said that a man could 
buy expiation for the wrong of his life or the evil in his 
soul, that it was the first Christian work to show mercy, to 
help the poor, to give to the sick, and suffering, and after- 
wards, if there were a surplus remaining, to give to the 
building of churches. 

The boldness of this sermon frightened his fellow-monks. 
They feared the result of such a manifesto. One of them, 
shaking his head, said to Luther, " Ah ! Doctor, you have 
been very rash to-day. This may be a bad affair for our 
order. The Dominicans are laughing at us already." 
"What matter, good father," replied Luther. "If this 
does not come from God, it will fall ; if it comes from his 
holy word it will stand;" repeating thus the sentiment of 
Huss, and Wickliffe, and Gamaliel, the sentiment of all 
who have learned the world's wisdom or are moved by the 
prophet's fire. 

This famous sermon of Luther soon came to the ears of 
Tetzel. It aroused all his wrath. He thought to crush 
the presumptuous preacher by words of authority. He 
stormed, he insulted, he threatened. He took one night 
to prepare a list of twenty propositions which were to 



256 MARTIN LUTHER. 

annihilate the Wittemberg doctor. He held him up to 
ridicule, he hinted at harder pains. "The Inquisition," 
said Tetzel, " shall be the judge of any who dare to deny 
what the Pope has ordered." The trial of fire and water 
he offered to Luther in taunting phrase. His taunts were 
flung back by satire. "Your cries seem to me," said 
Luther, "but empty braying. In stead of water I com- 
mend to you the juice of the vine, and in place of fire 
inhale, my friend, the odor of a good roast goose, and tell 
all your inquisitors, all your eaters of hot iron and splitters 
of rocks, that I, Martin Luther, live at Wittemberg, and 
that they will find at my house an open door, a table 
spread, good cheer, and a hearty welcome." 

But the time was come for a greater effort. The affair 
could no longer be one of mere self-denial. It was time 
to arouse the scholars and the dignitaries of the Church 
out of their indifference. The great Festival of All 
Saints, celebrated in Germany with peculiar zeal, was 
close at hand. Luther took no human counsel. Alone he 
ventured to brave the storm. He drew up ninety-five 
theses. They were clear, vigorous, and deliberately 
written ; he would stand by them as his word. Alone, in 
the evening, he went out to the Church ; with his own 
hand he nailed to the door these theses. (William III, of 
Prussia, caused bronze doors to be erected in place of the 
original wooden ones on which the theses were nailed by 
Luther, and the theses were cast in raised letters upon the 
doors.) That act made the thirty-first day of October, 
1 5 17, memorable in the history of the world. There 
began a new Christian cycle. The Reformation dates 
from that All Saints Day. 

On the morning of All Saint's Day, the crowds as usual 
thronged to the Church at Wittemberg to hear and join in 
the solemn mass of the great festival. But a strange in- 
scription upon the door arrested their notice. It gave a 
new turn to the thought of the people. It offered a new 
feature in the exercises of the day. They read in the 
long list of propositions, which rang in their nervous dia- 
lect like the sound of a trumpet, a defiance to that man 
who came there in the name of the Pope to make merchan- 
dise of souls. They saw it announced there that Martin 



MARTIN LUTHER. 257 

Luther stood ready that day publicly to maintain that the 
Pope had and could have no power to sell the pardon of 
sins, or to pardon any sins, but on the Scriptural condi- 
tion of repentance ; that it was a scandal and a lie to affirm 
of the Holy Father that he would thus set at naught the 
word of God ; that charity and faith, not the payment of 
money, were the means of salvation. The thing was im- 
mediately noised abroad, and before the hour of service 
had come, priests, monks, scholars, artisans, the noble and 
the poor, were all talking about the theses. i At the ap- 
pointed hour thousands were waiting in the Church, but 
Tetzel was not there, and his friends were silent. No one 
appeared to attack the novel doctrine. And the sun that 
day went down upon a triumph, the consequences of which 
no thought of ours can measure. The thousands of pil- 
grims that had come together dispersed over Saxony again 
to their homes. But they carried with them the record 
of the day's achievement. Instead of the certificate of 
pardoned sin, they bore back in their memories, if not in 
their hands, the words which they had read. No tidings 
had ever spread more rapidly. In two weeks all Germany 
had heard of them ; and before the month had passed, 
they were read at Rome. They were discussed in priestly 
conclaves, in colleges, and in workshops. They were 
translated into foreign tongues. The great classic scholars 
stopped to heed them, and the oppressed heart of more 
than one nation beat high with hope. They penetrated 
even to Spain, the dark and bloody ground of religion, 
and the recent hecatombs of victims could not prevent 
the Andalusians from rejoicing in this unlooked-for testi- 
mony. It was not the intrinsic importance of these theses, 
but the prophecy of greater things, which men felt that 
they contained. The world saw that they were the har- 
binger of a new element in human affairs, of a new day 
in religion. From all' sides came in testimonies to Luther 
that his act had not been fruitless or unheeded. Such 
men as Reuchlin and Erasmus were inspired by it with 
new hope ; and many a young student saw the reality here 
of his recent vision, and welcomed the words of the Saxon 
teacher as an assurance that the second coming of Christ so 
17 



258 MABTIN LUTHER. 

long delayed was now at hand. Even Pope Leo was more 
struck by the genius of Luther than enraged at his boldness. 

The next critical passage in Luther's life was his ap- 
pearance before the legate of the Pope at the Augsburg 
Diet in October, 15 18. We have no time here to detail 
the events which led to this citation. We must pass over 
that striking letter to Leo, the most blessed Father, where 
Luther humbles himself before the rule of the Pope, yet 
holds to and repeats his opinions ; the discussion between 
the Emperor and the Elector as to the best place for a 
hearing ; the defeat of the manoeuvres to draw him to 
Rome, which would have been sure destruction ; the in- 
dignation with which the friends of Luther regarded the 
scheme to entrap him. We must omit here, too, that most 
important friendship which Luther formed at this time 
with Melancthon, an event of moment for his whole sub- 
sequent career. 

The diet of Augsburg was called by Maximilian for 
political ends, to settle the disputed questions of sover- 
eignty, and especially to take measures against the invasion 
of the Turks. It seemed fit to Leo to make this imposing 
assembly, where the princes and nobles of Germany were 
met, the scene of trial for a fanatical monk, who had dared 
to oppose an ordinance of the Church. By a brief dated 
August twenty-third, Luther was summoned to appear at 
the Diet within sixty days to answer to the charges of 
heresy, and to retract his scandalous attacks upon the 
Church. The business was entrusted to a shrewd, accom- 
plished and famous doctor of the Church, the Cardinal De 
Vio, usually called Caietan, from the town where he was 
born. This man was noted for a moral purity unusual in 
his time and office, a burning zeal for the interest of the 
Church and the monastic order, and a truly Italian tact 
in diplomacy. He was versed in the lore of the schools, 
and proud in the dignity of his station, — the man, it was 
thought, at once fitted to refute, convince, seduce, per- 
suade and overawe a mind like that of Luther. He entered 
on the mission with confidence and alacrity; success 
seemed sure; no sane man could dream that a Saxon pro- 
fessor would hold out against a cardinal legate, armed as 
he was with power to crush the heretic. 



MARTIN LUTUELl. 259 

It was with great fear that the friends of Luther saw 
him set out for Augsburg in obedience to the mandate. It 
seemed to them a certain renewal of the tragedy of Con- 
stance. They could not believe that the safe conduct 
which he gained from the Emperor would be more re- 
spected than that of Sigismund had been. But Luther 
trusted in the justice of his cause. He wanted no friends 
to share his danger. His journey was made mostly on 
foot, and with no conveniences for travel. Yet he found 
that the people all along had heard of him and were 
waiting to welcome him. At Augsburg the various con- 
vents vied with each other for the honor of giving him 
hospitality. He was summoned as a heretic, but received 
as an apostle. Even the legate felt the need of treating 
such a famous man with respect, and made an effort to 
conciliate Luther in advance of the public hearing. One 
of the first persons who waited upon Luther after his ar- 
rival was the Urban of Sena Longa, a courtier of the 
Cardinal's, subtle, insinuating, and thoroughly master of 
Italian dissimulation. This man plied Luther with all 
sorts of arguments, and used all sorts of evasions to per- 
suade the doctor into submission, and prepare him for the 
serious interview. But he found that the honest soul of 
the Reformer was proof against his wiles. Luther under- 
stood it all, and these attempts to beguile him only gave 
him more strength in the cause he had espoused. Though 
friends and foes, the monks and the people were so busy 
in discussing his probable fate, he awaited calmly the day 
of hearing, determined in his mind how to act. 

On Tuesday, October nth, Luther found himself for 
the first time confronted in argument with a high dignitary 
of the Church. The reverence which he made when the 
interview began was not a sign of what the word was to 
be. The legate saw, to his amazement, that the criminal 
whom he had summoned was disposed to contest his au- 
thority. His mild request to Luther to retract, and to 
pledge himself to good behavior was strangely met by a 
demand that the errors in doctrine should be pointed out. 
His statement that the Pope had sanctioned the indul- 
gences was met by an assertion that the Pope had no right 
to sanction them. Caietan learned very soon that he had 



260 MARTIN LUTHER. 



a hard subject to deal with, one who was as little to be 
dazzled by the show of power, as he was to be silenced by- 
threats and commands, one who could baffle his ingenuity 
by words of fearless honesty. He had not met anywhere a 
man of Luther's stamp and there was no rule which he knew 
for getting hold of such a mind. His diplomacy was at 
fault. Every snare which he set was avoided, and he was 
mortified that the whole day should pass in fruitless discus- 
sion with no progress made in the humiliation of his an- 
tagonist beyond the first act of respect. Two more days 
were spent in the business, all the time with the affair 
growing worse and worse. The wily Cardinal was flung 
off his guard. His passions got the better of his pru- 
dence. He lowered his dignity by ridiculing his foe, and 
turned the laughter upon himself by his fierce loquacity. 
One thing he wanted, and that was just what he could not 
get, Luther's consent to retract. The more he stormed 
and threatened, the calmer Luther stood before him. He 
could not be betrayed into any insult. All that Luther 
would say was, " I will retract when you show me what I 
have said contrary to the Gospel of Christ. Answer my 
arguments and I will obey your commandment." 

The violence of the legate aided the cause of Luther. 
It was good for him that the Pope's emissary refused to 
hear. It gave him an excuse for departing. There was 
danger in the Cardinal's threats, and it was not safe to try 
his invitation too far. Four days he waited at Augsburg 
after the last interview, to see if the legate would relent 
and admit him again to his presence. He even added a 
modest letter, in which he asked pardon for any improper 
haste or petulance, and confessed his readiness to listen 
to the suggestions of the Holy Father. But the words "I 
retract," did not escape him. Without making his inten- 
tion known, one morning before daybreak, he quietly rode 
away and left his antagonist with the Italian courtiers to 
digest the matter as well as they could. 

In 'the month of June, 1520, two famous documents ap- 
peared. The one was an address to the German nobility 
from the hand of Luther proving that the Pope was the 
predicted Man of Sin and worthy of execration. Four 
thousand copies of this work were sold in a few weeks and 



MARTIN LUTIIEE. 261 



distributed throughout Germany. It was an appeal from 
the Pope to the nation, to defend their ancient rights, to 
support the cause of religion, of letters, of human free- 
dom, and Christian purity. It showed the Pope to be a 
thief, a tyrant and a traitor to God, living on the sweat of 
the poor and the infamy of the base, the head of a vast 
system of iniquity. "Let us blow down these walls of 
paper and straw which the Romans have built around 
them, and lift up the rods which punish by bringing the 
wiles of the devil to the light of day." He declares 
resistance to be the only remedy against the abuses of 
Rome. The yoke of Rome must be thrown off, its power 
defied, the tiara dashed from the head of St. Peter's im- 
pious successor. The Pope must be relieved of his sover- 
eignty. The Emperor should give him a prayer-book and a 
Bible that he may leave kings to govern, and betake him- 
self to preaching and prayer. In a long strain of indig- 
nant protest he goes over the abuses with which Rome 
has loaded the Church, and calls upon the kings and the 
nobles, the doctors, the students, and the people to unite 
themselves against their common oppressor. Such bold 
truth had never been spoken since a Reformer preached 
the new kingdom in the streets of Jerusalem. It re- 
sounded through the land, and rang like the blare of a 
thousand trumpets. 

Simultaneous with the appearance of this address, in 
solemn conclave at Rome, the Cardinals voted to declare 
to the world the famous bull which separated Martin 
Luther from the communion of the faithful and declared 
him a heretic, infamous and accursed. Forty-one proposi- 
tions were condemned. It was ordered that the Reformer 
shall burn all the books in which these propositions may 
be contained. Sixty days were given him from the time 
of the publication of the bull to retract, or to come to 
Rome and confess his sins. Otherwise, he and all his 
friends were to be treated as heretics, according to the 
ancient method. In the autumn of the year, Eck, bearing 
this fearful bull, appeared in Germany. It was proclaimed 
among the people ; some laughed, but many feared. Here 
and there men began to rid themselves by fire of the 
works of Luther. He met at first the bull by irony and 



262 MARTIN LUTHER. 

abuse. He treated it as a contemptible mockery of the 
popular will. But soon he saw that some more daring 
course must be taken. Three years before he had cen- 
sured the rashness of the Wittemberg students in burning 
the theses of Tetzel. Now he invited the officers and 
students to witness a more imposing auto da fe. On the 
tenth day of December at nine o'clock a. m., a great 
crowd were gathered at the east gate of the city, around 
the cross close to which a funeral pile of faggots had been 
raised. In solemn march Luther led the procession till 
they reached the spot. The fire was put to the pile. 
Luther then took the laws of the Church of Rome, the 
Decretals, the Clementines, the Extravagants, and the 
Canon law, which ages had been collecting in the Church, 
with the writings of Eck and Emser, and flung them on 
the fire. When these were burned he threw on the Papal 
Bull, exclaiming, " Because thou has troubled and put to 
shame the holy one of the Lord, so be thou troubled and 
consumed by the eternal fire of hell." A loud cheer ended 
the performance and they returned to town without out- 
break or confusion. 

On the second day of April, 152 1, Luther set out on his 
journey to Worms in obedience to the Imperial mandate, 
with the safe-conduct guaranteeing him an unmolested 
passage and a sure return. His friends saw him depart 
with heavy hearts, and those who went with him seemed 
almost to be going to martyrdom. Melancholy forebodings 
mingled with the welcomes which greeted him all along 
the way. The pride which Germany felt in the fame of 
her hero was troubled by the prospect of his fate. Ob- 
stacles all along were thrown in his way. Friends dis- 
suaded him, enemies jeered at him. But his heart was 
fixed. "I will obey the Emperor's order," was his answer 
to all their words. " Should they light a fire which should 
blaze as high as heaven and reach from Wittemberg to 
Worms, at Worms I will still appear in the name of the 
Lord and overthrow the monster. I will go up to Worms 
even if there were as many devils there as there are tiles 
on the roofs of the houses." His journey lasted fourteen 
days. On the sixteenth he entered the city more like a 
warrior returning from battle than a criminal going to 



MARTIN LUTIIEIi. 263 

judgment. The Imperial herald went before him. A 
body-guard of Saxon nobles were around him. The 
thousand students who had gathered to the great session 
welcomed him with their greetings, and all the streets were 
filled with a dense throng of people anxious to behold the 
man of the age. As Luther stepped from his carriage 
and saw this great, splendid crowd swelling before him in 
its ocean waves, his heart was lifted in the spirit of 
prophecy, and he exclaimed aloud, " God will be upon my 
side." Long after he had entered there, the crowds waited 
to see his face, to hear his voice, or to receive his bene- 
diction. 

The next day, at four P. M., was appointed for the hear- 
ing. As Luther went slowly along to the hall of meeting, 
he was at once cheered and awed by the sight before his 
eyes. It seemed as if the whole German people were 
poured into this one city. Every place where any one 
could see him was occupied, doors, windows, roofs, the 
spires of churches ; everywhere he saw anxious eyes 
turned upon him. Words of encouragement and of warn- 
ing fell upon his ear, among them the words of Jesus, 
"Fear not those," etc. " When you stand before kings," 
etc. He saw that he was safe in the hearts of the people, 
though the powers of the land might condemn him. With 
great effort he reached at last the hall, and came into the 
august presence of the assembled empire. A stout heart 
might have quailed in that presence, not so much from its 
numbers as from the exalted rank of its members. An 
Emperor, heir to the crown of the Caesars, an Archduke, 
six electors, the founders of dynasties, twenty-four dukes, 
eight counts, thirty archbishops and prelates, seven ambas- 
sadors from the States of Europe, and behind these a 
crowd of lesser nobles. It was before such an audience 
that Luther stood and listened to the word which sum- 
moned him to humble himself and to retract his teaching. 
Two questions were asked him. " Are these books (a 
goodly pile which lay there) yours ? " Next, " Will you 
declare that you condemn them and renounce their con- 
tents as heresy ? " The books are mine, answered Luther, 
when their titles were read. To your other question I 
must ask a short space to frame my answer that I may not 



264 MARTIN LU Til Ell 



endanger my soul nor offend God's word. His enemies 
rejoiced in this symptom of weakness." "This man will 
not make a heretic of me," said the Emperor. One day 
was granted to Luther to prepare his answer. It was 
spent by the Reformer not in the examination of his works 
to see how much he might spare from their contents, but 
in earnest prayer that God would give him strength. 

It was late the next day before they would give him 
audience. Two hours long he waited in the antechamber, 
with hundreds gazing there upon him. When at last, as 
the day was darkening, he stood before the Diet to answer 
again, all of them could see that the courage of the mar- 
tyrs was in his soul. His speech was modest, simple and 
earnest. First in his native German and then in Latin, he 
repeated it. It asked for a refutation of his errors. It 
appealed to the Bible as arbiter and God as judge. In 
respectful terms it reiterated the obnoxious heresy that 
every man was a freeman in Christ. It spoke a lofty 
faith in the truth, and implored the princes to act now as 
the servants of God. " Why do you bring us here ques- 
tions which the Church has long since decided," said the 
Imperial orator. " Answer yes or no, will you retract ? " 
"Since, then," said Luther, "your most serene majesty 
and the princes require a simple answer, I will give it 
thus : Unless I shall be convinced by proofs from Scripture 
or by evident reason (for I believe not in erring Popes 
and Councils), I cannot choose but adhere to the word 
of God which has possession of my conscience, nor can I 
possibly, nor will I ever, make any recantation, since it is 
neither safe nor honest to act contrary to conscience. 
Here I take my stand ; I cannot do otherwise. God help 
me ! Amen ! " The question was repeated then, with a 
similar answer. They saw it was vain to tempt this man. 
He had appealed to a higher tribunal than theirs, to the 
voice of God in the human soul, and it might seem to 
those men of earthly might and renown that it was the 
great voice of God speaking out to them through the dim 
light of that still hall. The Emperor was awed in such a 
presence. 

I need go no farther in the narrative, though it were 
interesting to speak of the visits which Luther received 



MARTIN LUTHER. 265 

from the nobles, the bishops, and the scholars while he 
stayed in the city, with what arguments they plied him, 
what lures they spread for him, what compliments and 
what insults he had to encounter. Nor need we stay to 
follow back his progress homeward and observe the joy 
that greeted him, and the gratitude which the voices of 
the people spoke for his strange preservation. I have 
finished the sketch of Luther's rebellion and reached its 
climax. It has now become an appeal from all human 
authority to the truth and word of God, an assertion of 
the rights of conscience, a new Gospel of freedom. The 
scholar of Wittemberg has become to our view the prophet 
of the world. The truth has been wrested by his arm 
from all its trammels. He stands before us now separate 
from the Church, and relying only on the invisible strength 
of God. Around him we seem to see gathering the hosts 
of heaven, the company of saints and prophets, to stand 
over against the hosts of the Church on earth. It recalls 
for us the old story of Elijah and the priests of Baal. 

But it is time to turn from this public work of the great 
Reformer to his more private sphere of duty, and see 
something of the spirit and character of the man. Just 
one month after the death of Frederic the Elector, Luther 
married Catherine of Bora, a nun escaped from a Misnian 
convent. Such an act gave great scandal to his friends, 
both in the court, and in the schools. It was a reproach 
upon the lofty virtue and self-denial which heretofore they 
had boasted of their master, and Luther was called to 
defend for himself what was right and proper on the 
principles which he laid down. But it was a fortunate 
step for his peace of mind. The partner whom he chose 
was beautiful alike in person and in soul, of a sweet, 
gentle, patient nature, fit to lighten his perplexing labors, 
and to console him in his sorrows. She had mind enough 
to appreciate, but not to differ from her husband, and the 
heart to admire him without the will to contend with him. 
She gave him the instance and model of what an obedient 
and loving wife should be. Though he might sometimes 
wish that she had a larger comprehension of the doctrines 
of faith and a deeper experience of spiritual struggle, still 
it was beautiful to turn from the devil who tempted him 



266 MARTIN LUTHER. 

so sorely to her serene and tranquil soul. She restored 
him to his simple humanity, and engaged the man who 
bore on his heart the creeds of nations and the interests 
of a future Zion, in the common cares of a humble 
household. She gave him sympathy with the details of 
an earthly life, and yet suggested to him visions of higher 
relations. Luther's marriage helped him at once to bear 
his poverty and to see how Christ was mystically joined 
to the bride of the Apocalypse. He found no loss in 
going back from his study-chamber to the company of his 
little household. The new experience of the affections 
interpreted for him the solemn oracles of God's word. 

And all a father's tenderness was called out to the 
children who grew and frolicked in his home. He learned 
then what Jesus meant when he blessed the little ones. 
They showed him the image of freedom, joy and purity. 
He seemed to be nearer heaven when they were playing 
around him. Their careless confidence was a sign of 
what the Christian's faith towards God should be ; he dis- 
covered spontaneously revealed in their souls all for which 
with such pains and doubt he was striving. Nowhere is 
his story more charming than in its episodes of domestic 
love and domestic sorrow. There is an exquisite contrast 
between his letters of controversy and defiance to Henry 
the despot, and Erasmus the scholar, and the quaint coun- 
sels which he found time always to write to his little son ; 
between Luther dictating formulas of faith and worship, 
to thousands of preachers and churches, and Luther listen- 
ing at intervals to the songs which his little daughter 
Magdalen sang so sweetly. There is a wonderful pathos 
in the tones in which he, who could go boldly on to his 
own martyrdom, speaks of the sickness and death of his 
child, to see the strong man, whom threats and dangers 
could not shake, bowed to the grief of a woman and pros- 
trate beneath the hand of God. We find in the life of 
Luther what we have not found in the story of all the 
saints before, a human interest and tenderness, scenes of 
emotion into which not piety and genius only may enter, 
but which are identical with those of the most simple life. 
The reverence of Augustine for his mother, the love of 
Basil for his friends, the charity of St. Francis for the 



MARTIN LUTUEB. 267 

poor, the sick, and the forsaken, are all beautiful, but the 
home of Luther attracts us by a stronger sympathy. The 
love there is of a deeper and holier sort. The sorrow is 
more human. 

Few homes were happier than that of Luther though 
few were more straitened in means. The worst enemies 
of the Reformer could not accuse him of the love of gold. 
He cared so little for the goods of the world that often 
the daily subsistence of his family seemed in danger of 
failing. He trusted in that Father who gives the ravens 
their food and clothes the lilies of the field. He had 
neither envy nor reproach for the rich ; only his heart did 
not turn in their direction. He had no care to extract 
profit to himself from the applauses of the world. At any 
time the chance was offered him of adding by the power 
of wealth to the dignity of his station. But money to him 
was of use only in saving others from want and enabling 
them to live without sorrow. His will speaks of his debts 
as nearly balancing his possessions and enjoins upon his 
loving wife to discharge these from the sale of the valua- 
bles remaining. This carelessness of gain has prevented 
any charge against the private integrity of Luther. Yet 
we cannot find that poverty brought to him any pain. He 
lived on in trusting cheerfulness. 

No man had a more genial nature. With all its robust- 
ness and earnestness his mind had a keen sense of humor, 
which even the most serious passages of his life could ex- 
cite. He had no relish for empty jesting, but he loved to 
give to grave discussions a quaint and comical turn. Even 
Satan, who was a terrible reality to him, was the object of 
his wit. He could laugh at, while he fought with, the 
Evil One. The ludicrous side of any argument or treatise 
never escaped him. He would detect and expose it in the 
letter of a friend, the essay of a rival, or the anathema of 
a Pope. The terrible decree which made him an outcast 
from the society of the faithful he answered by sarcasm 
and derision. Ridicule was a weapon which never failed 
him and which he used with astonishing power. No theme 
was so grave, no dignity so high, no issue so momentous, 
that his satirical taste hesitated to deal with it. His friends 
were often shocked, his enemies amazed, at the style of 



268 MARTIN LUTHER. 

his rejoinders. He almost invented for Germany a new 
vocabulary of grotesque and sarcastic terms. To many 
now this is the most repulsive side of the Reformer's 
character and spirit. His most serious writings seem at 
times profaned by their buffoonery. What is so charming 
and fresh in the extravagances and whims of the Table Talk 
is far from agreeable in the discussion of themes which 
the reverence of ages should have hallowed. This ten- 
dency of Luther has given ample materials to his Catholic 
defamers to hold him up to contempt and scorn. His 
garbled writings are made to attest a low and sneering 
hatred of all holy things, and the cunning Jesuit is able to 
show how a blackguard was mistaken for a Reformer. 
But the more candid critic, while he allows that the humor 
of Luther was not always of the most dignified sort, that 
his style was lacking in refinement, will see in it the proof 
of a genial soul, and a genuine cheerfulness. 

One of the most pleasant pictures of Luther's life are 
those social evening gatherings in the Black Eagle Inn 
where for fifteen years he was wont habitually to meet his 
more intimate friends ; and on the oaken benches and 
with the slight stimulus of the can of ale, to discuss all 
things known and unknown, the questions of theology, the 
topics of the day, the character of men, and the nature of 
God, the stars and the demons, the acts of the Pope, and 
the intentions of the Emperor, the spirit of poetry, the 
laws of morality, and the influence of woman ; the Scrip- 
tures, the creeds, the sacred songs and the worth of the 
Fathers, marriage, and the domestic duties, destiny and 
the state of the soul ; all things human or divine. From 
the fragments - of these interviews which friendship has 
recorded, we may imagine what a wealth of knowledge, of 
thought, of wit, and fancy was poured out by the master 
for his disciples, how many classic memories were revived, 
how many gleams of inspiration shot out, how many 
aphorisms dropped to suggest whole trains of most spiritual 
thought. Rarely in the reunion of friends do we find such 
spiritual talk thrown off in the gayety and glee of unbent 
minds. Here the floodgates of Luther's soul, when the 
pressure of work was taken off, were opened, and the tide 
which all day had been forced into the narrow channel of 



MARTIN LUTHER. 269 

some intense toil, was allowed to leap freely along and 
spread in its natural current. The Table Talk of Luther 
contains more materials for essay and poetry, more prac- 
tical hints, more spiritual wisdom, than all his vast folios 
of catechism, and commentary, and epistle. The letters 
of Abelard to a young girl, records of an unmanly pas- 
sion, make now the fame of that great scholar. The love 
songs which he wrote in secret and not his elegant learn- 
ing, give now to Petrarch his renown. And the broken 
words of Luther at the Black Eagle Inn, which he would 
never have given to the world, show now the perfect image 
of the man of his age. 

Kindred to his love for humor, but more free from excep- 
tion, was Luther's devotion to beauty in all its forms. He 
was an enthusiastic lover of nature. And he dwelt fondly 
on the charms of that Paradise which man's sin had 
ruined. His garden was as sacred as his study, and when 
the devil was too pressing, the tempter was readily ex- 
pelled by the diligent use of the spade. He was as 
sedulous in arranging his flower-beds as in translating the 
Gospels. He would kneel down to scent the violet, and 
take the breath of the rose. The rich tint of the peach 
suggested to him a thought of the beauty of God's spirit- 
world. The murmuring of brooks, the rustling of leaves, 
the sighing of winds, were all hymns sung to the Creator. 
The music in his soul was answered by the music of the 
Universe. This love of Nature, more than any reverence 
for sacred forms, made him a poet. It kept for him the 
conception of a living God. It gave a swing and freedom 
to his magnificent hymns. Luther had only to translate 
into verse the sentiment which moved him as often as he 
walked abroad. You can discover in his stanzas nothing 
of the hard, dry logician, nothing of the creed -maker. 
His creed seemed to embosom itself in his quick sense of 
living beauties ; it was not a delicate or refined sense, for 
he was very little of an artist, but a natural perception of 
concrete loveliness. No sternness of dogma could alienate 
from him this perception. When there was want within 
the house and no resource apparent, there was plenty to 
him without. He felt no spiritual hunger with the abun- 
dance of God around him. It was chiefly, I think, this 



270 MARTIN LUTHER. 

love of the beautiful which saved the theology of Luther 
from the dark fatalism to which Calvin was borne by his 
merciless logic. Nature was his antidote to the effect of 
dialectics, which harden the fibres of the spiritual life and 
ossify its heart. It was this, too, which saved for the 
churches of Germany the symbols of ancient piety, and 
hindered from ruin the grand Gothic piles, with their 
spires clustering like pine-tree tops, and their flowers 
blossoming from stone. Had Luther been like Calvin, we 
should have now no link to bind the Puritan conventicle 
to the Catholic cathedral. 

The place where Luther's greatness was most apparent 
was the place where he loved most to be, the pulpit. No 
audience of students, diplomatists or nobles, was so inspir- 
ing to his soul as a congregation of sinners waiting for the 
terms of grace and the bread of life. He had all the 
gifts of the Christian orator, a burning faith, and an imagi- 
nation so vivid that its pictures wore all the brightness of 
reality, an inexhaustible wealth of illustration, a style 
quaint and flexible, yet equal always to the dignity of the 
theme, a facility of adaptation, by which he could con- 
vince the reason while he melted the hearts of all classes 
of hearers, an earnestness that only subsided into pathos, 
and a power that relaxed itself only to the sweet tones of 
prayer ■ the physical gifts, too, of a voice clear and 
sonorous, a restless, piercing eye, a finely-chiselled head 
on a massive frame, hands that were feminine in their 
grace, with arms masculine in their strength. His dark 
hair fell in waves upon his shoulders. His dress was al- 
ways neatly arranged. The whole air of the man as he 
stood up to speak must have been inexpressibly charming. 
He was master of all varieties of dialect ; he knew the 
idiom of the shop and the street as well as of the college. 
His preaching ranged over all the level of his auditory, 
and none could fail to understand or to attend. He usually 
preached without special preparation, taking for text some 
passage of the Scripture where he happened to open. But 
his Scriptural study had been so diligent that he was 
ready on any part. He composed homilies for others, but 
he did not want them for himself. He loved better to 
depend upon the motion of the spirit, and to give himself 



MARTIN LUTHEIi. 271 

freely to the spontaneous flow of his thoughts. He cared 
for no order but the order of inspiration. 

The sermons of Luther are often too coarse to suit the 
refinement of modern taste, and too full of personalities 
and sarcasm to meet our idea of what sermons should be, 
but they were far more effective than finely written 
harangues would have been. There was always a pic- 
turesque background of the more awful doctrines. No 
matter how local or trivial the immediate topic, whether it 
were the drunkenness of men, or the vanity of women, 
the lies of cardinals, or the errors of scholars, always the 
vision of heaven being like a golden cloud in the sky of 
his thought, and the fires of hell shot up through its 
crevices and pauses. Men could see that this was no 
trirler who was talking to them in so quaint and simple 
speech. The impression was solemn enough, though the 
words might seem familiar. What they saw in Luther awed 
them into silence more than what they heard. It was not 
of the basket of summer figs that they saw, but of the 
majestic word of God speaking through the prophet, that 
they most felt and knew. Luther loved to preach. He 
was not weary in that work. It was his pastime, not his 
toil. He would preach when he was sick, and never with 
more power than then. It quickened his sluggish pulse 
to deal with the word of God before sinners. For years 
he preached three times in the day. The Sunday before 
his death he was in the pulpit of the church at Eisleben. 
He loved to preach in private too, as well as in public. 
On Sundays and feast-days he was wont to get together 
his wife and children, with the servants and a few privileged 
friends around the favorite pear tree in his garden, and 
there expound to them the laws of domestic duty and love. 
When it rained, his study was the place of meeting. A 
volume of these short domestic sermons may be found 
among Luther's works. 

But preaching, though a delightful, was not a light or 
easy work to Luther. He knew its difficulties ; he felt its 
grave responsibilities. Often he resolved to give it up as 
unfit for such a solemn service. His knees trembled be- 
neath him sometimes when he went up to his seat. It was 
not, however, a fear of human criticism or a distrust of the 



272 MARTIN LUTHER. 

human effect of his sermons.. "What do I care," said 
he. " that men say I don't know how to preach. My 
only fear is that before God I shall pass for not having 
worthily spoken of his great majesty and his royal works." 
It was the thought of the Saviour who gave him commis- 
sion that dissipated his fear. "Are you afraid," said he 
to his friend, " So was I. But I thought of the duty 
and became resigned. We are bound to preach ■ no mat- 
ter for our own fame, no matter for our temptations. Try 
to preach God our Saviour, and don't trouble yourself as 
to what the world may think of you." 

Luther's idea, expression, and thought rose with the 
grandeur of his theme. When he spoke of haughty sin- 
ners, Popes, and Kings, he seemed to have before his eye 
the grand pageant of the judgment of the dead.. The 
Judge is there with eye of flame, holding in one hand the 
Bible, in the other the pen for the fatal sentence. The 
royal sinner comes up in all the pomp of his garments and 
badges. One by one Luther strips them from him. First 
the diadem, then the cloak, then the sceptre, finally the 
sword, and leaves there only a bare form of clay, upon 
which he loads in return the sins and iniquities, and 
secret schemes of an earthly life. No poet had a more 
daring vision of God's judgment-hall than the preacher 
Luther was wont constantly to bring into his sermons. 

Luther wrote fluently in Latin as well as German. But 
he preferred the last. We might almost call him, consid- 
ering the number, the variety, and the influence of his 
works, the father of the modern German tongue. More 
than three hundred treatises came from his pen. He was 
never dull, though often profound. He was never super- 
ficial, though often dogmatic and abusive. Many men now 
could not read intelligently in a life-time what he wrote in 
these thirty years in the intervals of other labor. Men 
wonder at the fertility of a novelist's brain, which can 
produce, as in the case of Bulwer or Dickens, so many 
original fancies, or as in the case of James, so many pages 
of words. They are amazed at the seventy volumes of 
Walter Scott, or the three thousand comedies of Lope de 
Vega, but let them look at the massive range of Luther's 
folios which rest on the shelves of our large libraries, of 



MARTIN LUTHER. 273 

which one page contains more thought, more wit, more 
vigorous expression than you find in a whole play of De 
Vega, or a whole novel of James, and the first wonder 
speedily falls off. It is a Catholic writer who calls the 
literary achievement of Luther "miraculous." 

We may not stay to speak of Luther's poetic ability, or 
to instance any of his hymns in proof of his rhythmical 
skill. If he were less eminent in this sphere than as a 
preacher it is because he was pre-eminent there. Luther's 
poetry was all written for music. He composed at once 
the word and the tune. He was a lyrist, with no epic or 
elegiac tastes. He sansr not according to the rules of 
poetic culture, but to the needs of Christian worship. To 
reproduce in his native tongue the grand old chants of the 
early Church, to revive the fraternal choirs of Christians 
at Antioch and Ephesus, to popularize that glorious inar- 
ticulate voice which came to saints and emperors once as 
a celestial harmony, to diffuse among the churches of his 
land the fine traditions of Gregory and Ambrose, to trans- 
late from the monkish canticle and litany into the popular 
song that which made the life of the old Christian poetry, 
this was Luther's desire and this he accomplished. He 
gave songs and music to the German people which they 
will never let die, and still his chorals are sung in the 
churches with a spirit and a joy which put to shame the 
elegant monotony of our English psalm singing. 

We have but a few words to say of the man Luther. 
That his mind was rapid, acute, comprehensive, powerful, 
may be inferred from what has been said already ; that 
his heart was tender, affectionate, pure, the unswerving 
attachment of so many friends and the sweet pictures of 
his home are evidence. That his conscience was quick 
and living, not to be frightened, not to be seduced, is 
shown us by the scenes at Leipsic and Worms. There 
are passages in his life which seem to dull its transparency. 
There are inconsistencies which we must leave as we find 
them. His words are not always pleasant to the ear ; his 
spirit seems very often unlike that of his Master. But in 
contrast with the great elements of his character its small 
defects are but as spots upon the sun. A fair analysis 
and estimate of what he did, what he said, and what he 
18 



2 74 MARTIN LUTHER. 

suffered, leaves the conviction that here was a true man, a 
great man, even a holy man, one of the world's heroes, 
one of God's saints. In his soul the fear of God was 
paramount and supreme. No mean bondage to human 
opinion had power over him ; he believed in God and 
God's truth, and spoke from his faith and for it. There 
was no sign of hypocrisy about him ; the world knew him 
and saw what he meant and wanted. He served not the 
expediencies of men, but their eternal interests. If he 
compromised ever, it was like Paul to win souls to Christ. 
If he prophesied harsh and bitter words, it was like Isaiah, 
to humble the pride of kings and vindicate the honor of 
God. If he was sometimes eccentric and wild, it was the 
eccentricity of one who in the desert, in raiment of camel's 
hair, called on the people to repent. If he was sometimes 
intolerant and severe, it was that the truth of God might 
suffer no harm, and in memory of the apostolic counsel 
"not to be yoked with unbelievers." He lacked some of 
the special graces of his cotemporaries ; he had not the 
elegance of Erasmus, the sweetness of Melancthon, the 
self-forgetfulness of Zwingle, or the rich fervor of Martin 
Bucer. Calvin was his superior in logic, and ^Ecolam- 
padius had clearer insight into the spiritual truths of the 
Gospel ; but Luther combined more heroic elements than 
any one, more than all together. Not his position and 
influence merely, but his gifts and his character entitle 
him to a place with the chief of apostles and the greatest 
of prophets. He is the Pontifex of the Reform, not only, 
according to the charming conceit of an English poem, be- 
cause he builded the bridge across from the ancient to the 
new Church of God, but because to him as to the high 
priest of old the mysteries of God were revealed and 
made visible, because he saw whereof he spoke. Other 
names of Reformers may be joined to his and impart 
perhaps new lustre by their connection, but no name can 
be mentioned as that of Luther's peer. 

The characteristics of Luther were never brought into 
bolder relief than in the closing days of his life. Wasted 
by a painful internal malady, which had preyed upon him 
for years, and which irritated every sensitive nerve, he set 
out from Wittemberg on his Christian office of reconciling 



MARTIN LUTHER. 275 

strife between princes. It was in the dead of winter ; the 
way was blocked with snow, and the streams were choked 
with ice. It was a perilous time for a strong man to travel, 
but the faith in the sick man's heart could work for him 
strength. After several narrow escapes he reached at last 
the dear Eisleben, where he drew his first breath, and 
where too he was fated to die. He was near perishing 
at the outset, but at the thought of preaching his courage 
revived. Four times he ascended the pulpit, and his 
sermons were never stronger or clearer than then. But 
the conviction came home to him that he should never 
preach or travel more. The records of the interviews of 
these last days have been preserved to us. They show 
no abatement of the humor, the sarcasm, the freshness, 
the faith of the great Reformer. He hates the Pope and 
the Devil as heartily as ever. One might mistake the 
scene by the bedside for an evening of the Black Eagle 
Inn. It was strange, some might think repulsive, to hear 
the gay talk of the sufferer writhing under sharp torments 
and so close to his end. It was a sign, the Catholics said, 
that the Devil had come to claim his servant. 

In a few days the fatal morning came. The heart of 
Protestant Germany has marked well that eighteenth day 
of February. It is the first saint day of the Reformed Re- 
ligion. Every father can tell his children how it all hap- 
pened when Dr. Luther died, how they were sitting around 
the stove together, he and his little sons, and his friends 
Dr. Jonas and Cselius, how they were talking about the 
Pope when the frightful fit seized upon him, what agony 
he suffered for so many hours, what beautiful woids of 
comfort to friends and of prayer to God he spoke, how he 
thrice repeated "into thy hands, O Lord, I commit my 
spirit; for thou hast redeemed me," how his last word of 
answer was that he died firm in the faith which he had 
preached, how slowly he breathed his life away, what a 
grand funeral there was at Wittemberg, and how Me- 
lancthon spoke of the Apostle of Germany; all this is the 
burden of many a household tale. 

There are many shrines to which the feet of pilgrims 
press. The worn stone at Stratford-on-Avon, the monu- 
ment of St. James of Compostella, the tomb of Virgil, and 



276 MARTIN LUTHER. 

the Holy Sepulchre, will long continue to lead the favorite 
pilgrimages of genius and piety. Fewer steps turn to the 
Castle Church at Eisleben. Luther's grave is not the 
place where his memory is kept. But no year passes that 
some of the noble and pure of the world do not read with 
strange emotion that simple epitaph which tells only how 
the great Doctor was born and died. The feet of 
trampling horses have profaned that stone. But the Em- 
peror whom the living man defied once paused there in 
reverence. When Wittemberg was taken some years later, 
Charles V wished to see the Reformer's tomb. With 
arms crossed on his breast he read the inscription. An 
officer asked of him permission to open the tomb and 
scatter to the wind the ashes of the heretic. The eye of 
the monarch flashed. " I am not come," said he, " to 
war upon the dead. I have had enough of the living." 
So we here will leave the story of that ingratitude, of the 
wretched wife, and the neglected children, by which Ger- 
man princes outraged the memory of its greatest hero, and 
leave him to rest in his quiet tomb. We sought not out 
his pedigree. We will not trace the line of his pos- 
thumous fate. 



ST. THERESA. 277 



XI. 

ST. THERESA AND THE CATHOLIC MYSTICS. 

When Luther made his journey to Rome the greatest 
surprise and sorrow that he met was the apparent want of 
personal piety in the high places of the Church. The love 
of God seemed to have forsaken the proper servants of 
God. The wisdom which men preferred was the wisdom 
of Pagan deities, and the arts of the sanctuary were but 
the Pagan arts renewed and baptised. The altars of 
Jehovah were modeled from those of ancient Jove, and 
images of Pallas and Venus received the homage due 
only to the Holy Virgin. The sacred offices were an 
affair of custom, and few cared for sacred studies. Priests 
at the altar mocked at the host, while they pronounced 
the form of consecration, and drank the wine not rever- 
ently, but lustfully. The convents had lost all scruples 
about profanity. It was eccentricity there to be instant in 
prayer, or careful for God's honor. There was not even 
the poor pretence of piety to offset the moral corruption, 
and reconcile the devout mind of the Saxon monk to 
abuses which shocked him. There was not the plausible 
excuse which fanaticism is ever reacty to offer for its crimes 
that they are committed in the service of God and for his 
glory. Piety was no longer essential to promotion in life, 
nor to canonization after death. There were Popes who 
showed no spark of it, there were saints into whose narra- 
tive even falsehood dared not force it. 

To restore this lost spirit of piety to the Church might 
seem to the temper of a man like Luther a hopeless task. 
Even Loyola did not try to rescue the holiness of a clois- 
tral life, but began a new order of active Apostles. It 
was reserved for a woman to attempt and to do for the 
Church in her own land what neither the zealot nor the 
reformers stirred themselves to effect. In revivals of re- 



2*78 ST. THETIESA. 



ligion the gentler sex are always prominent. Where mul- 
titudes press around the dying Saviour, the sisters of 
Martha and Mary will always be found nearest to the 
cross. The theology which prefers mystery before logic, 
and feeling above intellect, will always find, as in history it 
has always found, its warmest adherents with that sex 
whose law is the law of love. The men who have written 
most about the mysteries of religion have confessed that 
they learned the rudiments of these at the mother's knee. 
Faith in God is not often taught by the pedagogue's pre- 
cept. It is fixed in the heart by the soft influence, stealing 
inward, of the constant domestic lessons which the infant 
learns from the lips of her who loves him best. The re- 
ligion of the creeds, the dogmas which measure heresy, 
and excite controversy, and give scope to ingenious argu- 
ment, you go to the books of doctors, the records of 
councils, the canons of the Church to find. But the re- 
ligion of the affections, the faith which opens the doors of 
heaven and joins the soul to God, and kindles continually 
the flame of devotion, to find this, you go to the hymns 
and meditations, the words and the life of such saints as 
Theresa of Avila. 

For the authentic story of Theresa's life we are not left 
to the extravagant tales of Catholic eulogists. Her own 
pen tells in simple and truthful phrases what was the dis- 
cipline she passed, what were the purposes she formed. 
Her works are the best testimony to her life, but we have 
also in her own words the narrative of her early decisive 
experiences. In the year 15 15, on the twenty-eighth of 
March, the Knight Alonzo of Cepeda, welcomed in his 
household, already numerous, and soon enlarged to the 
Scriptural number of twelve, another daughter, whom he 
named Theresa. He was worthy of such a child, being 
an example of all the virtues which should belong to the 
good neighbor, citizen, friend, and father. There was 
daily almsgiving at his door, there were daily prayers in 
his family meeting. The books in his library were not all 
worldly, and the custom of her parents taught Theresa 
early to prefer the works of the fathers, of Augustine and 
Jerome, to the romances of chivalry. At seven years the 
child was familiar with the lives of the saints and was 



ST. THERESA. 279 



accustomed to talk with a little brother, still younger, on 
the great themes of eternity and heaven. They read 
about the martyrs, and one day in the fervor of devout 
zeal, resolved to go into Africa and labor and die there 
for the conversion of the infidels. They had actually 
started and gone some distance, when upon the bridge 
near the town, an uncle overtook them and led them back 
again. But this could not stop their pious exercises. 
They wondered still at the great thought of Eternity and 
kept repeating the word to each other. They gathered 
piles of stones in the garden into little cells, and played 
hermit together. As Theresa grew older, she loved soli- 
tude more, and prayer became her most delightful pastime. 
She would spend hours in gazing at a picture of Jesus 
with the woman of Samaria, which hung in her chamber, 
and repeat to herself those words, " Lord give me of this 
water that I thirst not." 

The death of her mother, which occurred when she was 
twelve years old, was the occasion of very serious reflec- 
tions, and the orphaned child felt that in her danger and 
sin she needed the more the protection of the Blessed 
Virgin. But the loss of this earthly mother left her to 
temptations from which the favors of the Virgin was 
hardly a protection. She soon reached an age when the 
charms of the world are apt to exert a prevailing influence, 
and even the surroundings of religion are not able to pre- 
vent the natural impulses. The romances which were as 
attractive then as now to young ladies in fashionable 
circles drew her by their fascination. She learned from a 
young female cousin, who had seen the world and knew 
its tastes, how to curl her hair and trim it, how to use per- 
fumery, and dress handsomely. The change in her senti- 
ments could not long be concealed, and her Puritanic 
father, whose courtesy forbade him to refuse these dan- 
gerous visits of kindred, secured his daughter from their 
risks by sending her to a convent. Here it was very dull 
at first. The pious nuns, who spoke only to leprove, and 
who never smiled, were a hard exchange for gay com- 
panions who talked about knights and castles, about balls 
and dress, and about the tender passion. But Theresa 
soon got accustomed to it, and listened at last with respect, 



2»o ST. THERESA. 



if not with profit, to the devout homilies which a convent 
sister used to deliver from the text " Many are called, but 
few are chosen." A year and a half spent here, however, 
enfeebled a constitution not naturally strong, and her 
father took her home again. 

The decisive epoch in Theresa's life was in a visit which 
she made soon after this to the house of an uncle in the 
country. The exceeding piety of this uncle, whose heart, 
naturally religious, had been subdued by affliction, and 
his habitual conversation about God, wrought upon the 
heart of the young girl so that she felt the call of God to 
a religious life. Severe fever, repeated more than once, 
confirmed this decision. She would not wait for her 
father's consent, and remembering that Jesus had said, 
" he that loveth father or mother more than me, is not 
worthy of me," she determined to leave her home and go 
to Christ. The convent which she chose was of the order 
of Mount Carmel, more rigid in its rules than the Au2:us- 
tinian where she had been a pupil before. Her season of 
novitiate was passed with a constantly increasing joy. Her 
public vows at last were taken with singular enthusiasm, re- 
markable in one whose twentieth year was not yet com- 
plete. The same year that Theresa gave her vows to a 
life of prayer, Ignatius and his brethren in the chapel of 
Montmartre vowed themselves to a life of action in the 
service of God's Church. The torments of Ignatius and 
his brethren were self-inflicted. But Providence ordained 
for Theresa more terrible trials of the flesh than they were 
called to bear. Such complication of maladies, such awful 
sufferings, such burnings of fever, racking of nerves, such 
emaciation and pains of hunger, few have endured so long 
and lived. Sometimes she would lay for days in a lethargic 
trance, sometimes the least drop of water in the mouth 
would bring suffocation, and the presence of any one near 
agony of the whole frame. Three years she remained a 
cripple, able with difficulty to crawl about. Yet God, who 
tried her so severely, sent comfort to her soul. 

For in this period she learned the sublime secret of that 
mental prayer, of which she was afterwards enabled to be 
the prophetess to the Church. She had occasion in those 
long years to find by what process the resigned spirit con- 



ST. THERESA. 281 



quers the weak and fainting flesh. Left alone by the 
world, helpless and hopeless, she could find how excellent 
is a Christian trust in God. She could examine her own 
soul by the most searching tests, could watch and compare 
her varying sensations, and discover the closest hiding of 
her sin. She could learn that love and custom, and not 
corporeal strength, were necessary to unite the soul to 
God, that sickness is a better stimulant to prayer than any 
solitude. She could commend, too, by patience and calm- 
ness and a fervent heart the faith which sustained to those 
who wondered at its triumphs. And when after three 
years' interval she went back to her convent again, it was 
with a degree of perfected virtue which no convent life 
could possibly bring. Now, her father, who had before 
been jealous of her spiritual integrity, began to find in 
her a teacher of spiritual wisdom. Very touching is the 
account which she gives of his parting hours, when she 
waited at his bed with her brothers and sisters, received 
his last instructions and joined in his prayer, how, when 
he complained that his shoulders were pained, she re- 
minded him what pain Christ bore, when he carried his 
cross, and what he promised to those who should share 
with him that burden, how he expired, with blessings to 
his children and the words of the creed upon his lips. It 
was a scene which no renunciation of the world could 
erase from her memory. 

We may pass rapidly the next decade of years in the 
life of the young nun. Outwardly, they have no variety 
to offer. There is nothing salient in the monotony of the 
cloister. The days succeed each other with the same even 
round of prayers and duties, and in the nights come 
blessed visions to one and all of those who watch and 
pray in the proper spirit. If Theresa's own statement can 
be taken, her heart was not yet wholly pure, nor her pur- 
pose firmly fixed. There were intervals when other visi- 
tors than those of her confessor were welcome at the grate 
of the convent. She was drawn at times to talk about the 
things of the world, and to indulge memories of scenes 
forbidden to a daughter of Christ. Much, no doubt, of 
this pretended worldliness was mere self-accusation, but 
there is no doubt that the mind of the recluse had not 



282 ST. THERESA. 



attained yet the state of perfect calmness in which it 
could repose satisfied with the love of God. We may at- 
tribute this in part to the saint whose writings Theresa 
best loved to read, and who for a thousand years had been 
the chief instrument in unsettling the thoughts and emo- 
tions of the women of the Church. While Jerome of 
Bethlehem, that restless and complaining spirit, had 
dominion over her soul, she could not even in piety, be 
happy. It was not until she escaped from his fascination, 
and left his distracted pages to ponder the sweeter visions 
of the son of Monica that she found the true peace of 
believing. Augustine was the reconciler of her soul, and 
as she read those glowing pages of his Confessions she 
felt as she had not before since the days of her childhood, 
the rapture of a true submission to God. 

It was a strange feeling for one who had wandered long 
in anguish of mind, a saint to the eyes of observers, but 
in her own heart a weary pilgrim, to find herself at last at 
the feet of the Saviour, a kneeling penitent. She remem- 
bered now as something strange, how Christ was wont 
before to appear to her, with a stern look, and an air of 
displeasure, as she ventured to approach him, as he looked 
down once upon the diseased woman. But now how 
lovely was his countenance, how gentle his demeanor. 
The confessors to whom she related her experience were 
suspicious of so sudden a change, and bade her beware 
lest Satan were seducing her into a vain confidence. But 
a Jesuit who came that way, to whom the new spiritual 
light of Ignatius and his friends had given new insight, 
welcomed such an experience as a divine promise, and 
bade her continue her meditations upon the love of God 
and the life of Christ. In the year 1557, Francis Borgia, 
third general of the order, returning from a visit to the 
worn-out emperor Charles, passed through the village 
where Theresa dwelt. His counsels to the recluse did not 
weaken her ardor, and his recital of his own strange ex- 
perience became as fuel to the flame. The contest with 
the world grew fiercer, troubles seemed to thicken around 
her. As her sanctity seemed to be more real to her, it 
became doubtful to those around her, and lying tongues 
pronounced that what were to her the whispers of Christ's 



ST. THERESA. 283 



voice were really demoniac suggestions. She began to 
fear for herself and to mourn her own exquisite joy. 
Forsaken by the world, and hardly daring to kneel with 
her sisters at the Lord's table, she yet leaned when alone 
upon the arm of Christ as her sufficient friend. 

The great consolation of Theresa's life at this period 
was the habit of mental prayer. This is the radical idea 
of the mystic theology, and as Theresa, in her journal, 
draws out at length and describes its proper signs, we 
may take occasion here to review her system. She com- 
pares the influence of prayer upon the soul to water upon 
the soil of a garden. The garden can be watered in four 
ways, from the well, by constant and laborious drawing 
and pouring, or by raising it with a wheel to run down in 
little conduits, a process less tiresome than the first and 
more abundant in its supply, or by turning the course of a 
brook or rivulet, so that it shall spread over the garden 
instead of rushing along in its narrow bed, a method 
which distributes equally its refreshments and requires 
from the gardener more watchfulness than toil, or lastly, 
by a full shower, which saves all human labor, and drops 
upon the soil to penetrate but not to harm, incomparably 
the best of all the methods. So prayer can be applied to 
the soul. It may be first a mental effort, wrung out from 
the pains of sinful remembrance, from remorse and shame, 
from weariness and toil. This is the first beginning of 
prayer. It comes as water drawn from the well, requiring 
a collection of thought, a self-examination, an interior 
exercise of discipline which make the soul stronger, but 
give it all the time the sense of effort. But all mental 
prayer must so commence, and there are always single 
roots and plants of virtue so dry, that they will need to be 
watered by that prayer which is drawn from the fresh 
fountain of flowing tears. 

Next to this comes what Theresa calls the prayer of 
quiet. This is an even, steady process of concentrating 
the powers of the soul upon the great thoughts of Jesus 
and God. It turns in the soul that wheel of its powers 
and emotions that the waters of reverence and gratitude 
shall fall of themselves into their true direction. It is 
not, like the first kind of prayer, a laborious repetition of 



284 ST. THERESA. 



many single efforts, but a constant spiritual operation. 
The will guides, indeed, the stream of divine grace, but 
the weakness of the spirit does not hinder its even flow. 
In the prayer of quiet, meditation is an effort, but not a 
painful or wearying effort. It is like the work of the bee, 
which flies from flower to flower, gathering honey from all, 
but bringing all home together joyfully to its cell. This 
is the proper sequel to the first step of mental prayer. 
That is taken when the heart pressed down by its sins, 
cries out for the living God. This follows when it fixes 
itself upon the great conceptions of Christ and heaven. 
In the first process one is forced to go over the dry field 
in every direction and water each root of virtue with a 
special baptism of prayer, to look upon the sins and needs 
of the heart. In this second process, one has only to sit 
at the fountain, look down into its depths, and draw con- 
tinually, only to contemplate the sources, and not think of 
the issues of the friendly stream. This kind of prayer 
belongs to that stage of religious experience which longs 
after God, but has not quite found him. It has got beyond 
penitence, but it has not reached a perfect spiritual union. 
This is reserved for the next stage. 

The prayer of union which corresponds to the brook 
turned in upon the field and flowing over it, is what 
Theresa calls a sleep of the soul, a sleep of all its powers, 
in which they are not entirely lost, but in which they are 
unconscious of their own action. It is to the previous 
stage what reverie is to meditation. The grace of God is 
turned by it to meet the soul, but so turned that the active 
powers are not used in the process. It is that state of the 
heart when it surrenders itself wholly to that influx of 
holy and refreshing thought, which bathe it all over with 
beauty and joy. It seems to unite the soul to God, to the 
eternal flow of his love. It makes the soul a channel of 
his grace, covering it all over and touching it at every 
point, and yet it was in the beginning a voluntary act. 
The condition of this inundation of divine grace was es- 
tablished when the barrier was fixed in the brook. And 
the relation of this kind of prayer to those that we have 
described is clearly marked. Penitence, longing, union, 
these are three steps, thus far. But even union does not 



ST, THERESA. 285 



exhaust the capacities of prayer. The soul is here joined 
to God, flooded by his grace, at one with him but is not 
yet penetrated through and through by his searching love. 
It knows how it is refreshed. It feels the weight of the 
stream. And there may be points here and there of its 
life not yet touched, as there are plants in the garden 
whose nodding summits wave over the top of the stream. 
There is one other step of prayer to be taken, one other 
process by which God shall become to the soul all in all. 
And this Theresa calls the prayer of rapture, when God's 
grace falls upon the soul all from above as showers upon 
the field. 

Upon this last kind of prayer Theresa expends all the 
force of her eloquence and enthusiasm. Words are weak 
in describing its heavenly joy. This is the prayer that 
raises one truly from earth, and in humbling the soul, 
exalts it. In this, the ravished soul sings of the glories 
and the loveliness of God's Paradise and forgets all that 
belongs to self. Its gladness is that of the young bird 
that has flown about all day in wood and pasture, seeking 
food and pleasure, but warbles now at rest on the spray 
above its nest. In this spiritual state the soul is dazzled 
by God's light, amazed by his love, trembles and thrills 
continually to his touch. To describe this state as Theresa 
describes it, one must have dwelt in it long, else the 
description will seem extravagant. All nature showed 
symbols to her gaze of this sublime self-renunciation. 
All men are dust and ashes, and belong by nature to the 
ground. But as dust is raised by the wind till it shall be 
held in the air and borne onward, so the mortal spirit is 
lifted and borne on by the breath of prayer till it floats 
impalpably in the region of light. 

I ought to follow this treatise concerning prayer still 
farther, to do justice to the idea of the Saint. But I fear 
to lead you too far into the mazes of her mysticism. 
Prayer was the foundation of the system which she taught, 
the first principle of the religious life. But it was not 
vain or fruitless prayer. And it is remarkable that one 
who could indulge in such raptures, should speak such 
sensible words as we find in a letter which she wrote to 
Father Gracian. "The best prayer," says she, "and most 



286 ST. THERESA. 



acceptable to God, is that which leaves the best effects 
behind it ; not results pleasant to vanity and pride, but 
works which are wholly for the glory of God. Beautiful 
is the prayer which brings not satisfaction, but holiness to 
our hearts. As for me, I want no other prayer than what 
shall make me increase in virtues. Even if great trials, 
temptations, thirst, come with it, if it make me humbler, 
I will think it good. What pleases God best, I will count 
the truest petition. It is not by tears, but by patience 
and submission that we offer to God the most worthy 
honor." 

Many years were passed in the exercises which proved 
and the writings which pictured this elementary piety. 
Day by day the fervor of Theresa's heart was newly in- 
flamed. The Confessors, experienced men of the several 
religious orders, could not quite understand such spiritual 
elevation. It passed the comprehension of Baltasar 
Alvares, the Jesuit, who rejoiced in what he could not ex- 
plain, John of Avila, the learned Dominican, whose wis- 
dom Theresa found useful in her doubts, could find no 
parallel in the stories of the Saints to an exaltation at once 
so mystical and so methodical. And Peter of Alcantara, 
whose Franciscan habit made him a teacher of practical 
benevolence, could not reach by his counsels spiritual 
needs which went far beyond his own. Soon even the 
strictness of the Carmelite rule failed to satisfy a heart 
that wanted to be absorbed in God. In the sisterhood of 
the Incarnation there was not sympathy enough with the 
visions which constantly came to Theresa's cell. The 
nuns there were good and devout, but they lacked that 
hunger and thirst after immortal life which would gladly 
be released from the body. They were contented to eat 
and drink, and sought no personal suffering. 

Among the fancies which crowded the chambers of her 
imagery, a vision began to take more shape and form of a 
new religious order, which should consecrate life wholly to 
prayer, as the Society of Jesus was vowed to action. She 
dared to indulge the dream that the old theory of convent 
life was possible still, that the world might be wholly shut 
out from the saintly heart and die to the desire, and even 
to the memory of a daughter of Christ. Long in silence 



ST. THERESA. 2S7 



this imagination was cherished. At first it was whispered 
^nly to her Jesuit adviser, in the secrecy of the confes- 
sional. Then a young nun, her niece, was taken into 
confidence, and as a third, a pious widow, whose husband 
had recently died. These three together set themselves 
to establish a new house of prayer, where God should be 
all in all. Great outcry was instantly made about the in- 
solence of a few thus setting themselves as holier than the 
rest. The magistrates, the nobles, the priests, and the 
nuns of Carmel, protested against granting a license 
to a scheme at once so arrogant and foolish. The miracu- 
lous preservation of her little nephew, who, taken up for 
dead when a wall had fallen upon him, had been restored 
in the arms and by the prayer as was thought, of Theresa, 
enlisted another sister of the Saint in the sacred enterprise. 
More friends were speedily added. Obstacles appeared 
only to be overcome. The Pope's brief silenced all cavils 
and calumnies. The corner-stone of the new convent was 
laid ; in spite of frequent accidents the walls rose thick 
and strong; and on the twenty-fourth of August, 1562, the 
religious house of St. Joseph in Avila, was dedicated by 
the solemn service of the mass. Five women knelt before 
the altar, vowing themselves there to silence, solitude and a 
life of prayer. At their head, renouncing openly all worldly 
goods and all former titles, the daughter of a knightly 
house, and the nun of the Incarnation, with the words of 
the Psalmist, " Thou, O Lord, art the portion of my in- 
heritance and my cup, thou shalt keep me forever," upon 
her lips, assumed the name of Theresa of Jesus. 

It seemed a mean and pitiful abode to those accus- 
tomed to the apparatus of convent life. The little bell of 
the chapel, weighing but three pounds, seemed to satirize 
the weakness which would begin such a reform. The 
coarse dress of black serge, the towel on the head, and the 
sandalled feet of the new recluses, became subjects of 
ridicule to profane wit. The first months of her new life 
were months of mental suffering and strife with all sur- 
rounding influences. The governor of the city prohibited 
their performance of the sacred rites. The superior of the 
convent to which Theresa had formerly belonged ordered 
her back again to her former duties. For a time it was 



288 ST. THERESA. 



feared that the new altar would be thrown down, and the 
grave soon conceal the despair of the weak and persecuted 
Virgin. But the Society of Jesus, whose name she now 
shared, used their art to sustain her, and when the year 
1564 began she was able to rule in peace a convent in 
which ten had taken already the extremest vows. 

And, now, the great purpose of long years of prayer 
fairly secured, Theresa commenced that series of labors 
which, if we consider the age. the person and the influ- 
ence upon the future of more than one nation, are cer- 
tainly as extraordinary as woman ever performed in the 
same space of time. She became at once the missionary, 
the legislator, and the prophet of the cloister, making such 
journeys as might have broken the strongest health, 
miraculous almost for a frame so worn by disease and 
sorrow, inventing such laws, that even the bishops of the 
Church confessed that a Spanish recluse was wiser to 
govern than those who had been trained in court and 
school, and uttering such sweet and holy revelations, that 
the doctors all confessed in her the guidance of the spirit 
of God. The pen of her eulogist drops in the vain en- 
deavor to record the multitude, the variety, the greatness 
of her services in the cause of Christian piety. The 
wondering critic suspends his censure on the obscurity of 
those folios of mystical allegory and spiritual meditation, 
which rival the achievements of the great teachers of the 
Church. One who is daring enough now to venture upon 
the perusal of those hundreds of epistles, all filled and 
inspired with the one great theme of prayer and the di- 
vine life, stops to wonder at the physical endurance which 
could have produced them, and hardly ventures to enter 
the secrets of their rapture. It is hard even to classify 
the writings which are compressed into those six ponderous 
volumes. We have heard much of the fecundity of 
Spanish writers in the age of Theresa, what hundreds of 
romances one, what thousands of dramas another wrote, 
how Lope de Vega could furnish in a single night a comedy 
that should shift fifty times its scenery, and consume al- 
most as many hours in the theatre as in the chamber of 
its composer ; we have heard, too, of Cervantes in prison, 
and that solace of his lonely hours, which should at once 



ST. THERESA. 289 



annihilate and immortalize the follies of chivalry, we have 
heard of the industry of Ximenes, the cardinal law-giver, 
who could frame for a despotism statutes which a republic 
might covet for their justice and wisdom, but the wonder 
of all these is equalled in the daily epistles, so long and 
full that a day might be needed to read them, and the pro- 
found treatises in which not sarcasm but ecstasy winged 
the eloquent phrases, and the wise laws for an humbler 
life, which should keep in force long after the laws of 
Ximenes had ceased to restrain men, which all came from 
the cell of Theresa of Jesus. 

Two of the treatises of Theresa have been classics in 
the Mystic Theology. The " Path of Perfection " is the 
manual for all who would discover a spiritual way to the 
abode of God. It surveys and sets landmarks all along 
the heavenly road. It follows the influences of prayer in 
their secret windings through the soul, showing how it is 
possible to escape here by discipline of the heart from 
trammels of the flesh. It carries the soul of the penitent 
recluse up through the conflicts and trials of earth till it 
is left at the outer gate of heaven. This treatise is the 
Catholic's guide in self-examination and in prayer. It 
deals with the means of grace. It teaches how to conquer 
the world and subordinate all material goods to the glory 
and love of God. It vindicates that spirit which would 
lead one to give up all ties of kindred, all attractions of 
friendship, the love of brethren and of country, all things 
brightest and most precious, even the luxury of doing 
good, for the sake of a single communion with Christ. Its 
doctrine is that there is nothing good but constant medita- 
tion. Its precept is to pray without ceasing. Its warning 
is to keep the soul with all diligence, that it may be ready 
for the Redeemer's coming. Its promise is of a life hid 
with Christ in God. 

" The Castle of the Soul " completes the process which 
the " Path of Perfection " opens. Here the way described 
is not the way of the seeking soul towards heaven, but the 
way of the believing soul in heaven. Through the seven 
abodes of the celestial world it conducts the soul till it at 
last reaches the highest crowning glory of a perfect union 
with God. Marvellous and daring are the nights of this 
19 



290 ST. THERESA. 



mystic treatise. The humility of the penitent is here 
changed to the vision of the saint. In the former work 
we learn what the experience of long years of sickness 
and trouble, of doubt and sin had taught the devotee con- 
cerning this worthless world. In this last work we learn 
what the swift hours of rapture had revealed of that world 
where God and his angels dwell. The other work gave 
the counsels of the disciplined guide, this the oracles of 
the inspired seer. It burns on with a strange religious 
fire, and its imagery is of the most etherial. In this 
work Theresa seems to soar with the steady daring of the 
young eagle in his flight. No comparison is too bold for 
her grasp. The changes of the soul as it passes through 
the mansions of heaven are as those which transform by 
many stages the small seed of the mulberry tree into the 
butterfly with golden wing. In the sixth dwelling of 
heaven, the sensation chiefly is of a strong hunger and 
thirst after the seventh and highest. It is a thirst which 
burns in the soul with an unquenchable desire, which 
nothing can satisfy but that water which Jesus promised 
to the woman, drawn from the well of living water. Sixty- 
two years old was the Saint when the pages of this strange 
book were written. It had few readers in her day, it has 
fewer now, since the patience and understanding of the 
fewest are fitted to such lofty treatment of such lofty 
themes. 

But we cannot stay to analyze these works on which the 
fame of Theresa as an exponent of the spiritual life rests 
in the Catholic Church. We may turn to see for a mo- 
ment the Saint as the missionary of the cloister. Scarcely 
two years had the first convent of reformed Carmelites 
been fairly established, when other neighborhoods became 
anxious to enjoy the presence and benediction of so sacred 
a sisterhood. Noble women, not a few, were ready to 
dedicate their goods and their lives in such a cause. It 
seemed to Theresa the manifest call of God that she 
should multiply the foundations of her order. It was sad 
for her to break away from the solitude which she loved, 
but she was willing to heed the Spirit. It was midnight 
on the eighteenth of August, 1567, the festival of the 
Assumption of the Virgin, when in the city of Medina, 



ST. THEBES A. 291 



sixty miles from Avila, the superior of the convent of St. 
Joseph, with a few young nuns, went on foot to the humble 
house which had been bought for them. It was dangerous 
to be in the streets at that hour. Maskers were abroad, 
and the wild bulls which should supply the next days' 
cruel sport were driven by men as wild to their place of 
preparation. But we thought, says Theresa, of nothing 
but the Lord, who will deliver his own from every danger. 
In the darkness our house seemed very desolate. Earth 
was thrown up around the gate and the walls were sadly 
broken and defiled. The night was deepening, our candles 
burned dimly, and we had only three poor mats to cover 
the ruins where was to be our dwelling-place. Where 
should we set the altar of God in this confusion. Prayer 
showed us the way, heaven came to our aid, our hands 
worked busily, and when morning dawned, a modest table 
of stone was prepared, the little bell of the corridor 
sounded, and the inhabitants of the city thronged to see 
the convent and the altar which a few poor recluses had 
raised as by enchantment in a single night. The crowd 
was so great that it interrupted the Holy Sacrifice, and the 
unprotected nuns were forced to seek refuge behind the 
altar which they had built. But it was a joyful season to 
Theresa. She could remember that meeting of a few 
brethren just thirty-three years before in the Chapel of 
the Martyrs, and what wonderful issues had come from 
their vow, and trust in the omen for a revival of piety 
now, as zeal had been there revived. And yet a sad 
heart-sickness seized her as she looked out of the window 
and saw the piles of rubbish which encumbered the court- 
yard, and blocked up the doors of her house of prayer, 
and thought of the ruin of the Church by its fatal schisms, 
its concessions to heresy, encumbering the courts of God 
by vain logical subtleties, and beheld in fancy the hideous 
and drunken phantom of Reform pressing already at the 
gates of her dear Catholic Spanish land. Night and day 
for a week she watched there, lest the mysteries of the 
faith should be profaned. And she ceased to guard the 
treasures of her altar only when the piety of a merchant 
of the city had given them a secure resting place. 

The year had not passed when she was called to estab- 



292 ST. THERESA. 



lish another house of her order. And the number which 
she founded soon exceeded the years of her remaining 
life. In the old knightly city of Toledo and in Valladolid, 
so rich in quaint romantic legends, in Seville, where the 
luxury of Moorish life still lingered, and in Grenada, 
where the finest trophies remained of Moslem downfall, 
in Segovia, the centre of frivolity and cruelty, and in 
Brugos, the scene of eighty battles, in Salamanca, where 
science boasted a rivalry with religion, and in Alva, where 
the strong hand of power pressed heaviest upon the peo- 
ple, in these and in many other places, the reformed nuns 
of Mount Carmel taught and exemplified the superior 
glory of a life of prayer. Before her death seventeen 
convents could claim Theresa as their founder, and thrice 
that number of recluses could be mentioned who had 
come down from stations of wealth and influence, from 
the most exalted social rank, giving their fortune to the 
treasury of Christ, and their hearts to the Saviour. 
Fourteen convents, too, of the other sex reckoned Theresa 
by the rules which she gave them, to be their proper head. 
In the work of establishing these, a singular zealot, styled 
John of the Cross, was the efficient apostle. The rich 
legends of fanaticism in the Catholic Church nowhere 
surpass what they tell of this high-priest of penance and 
woe. To him suffering and gloom were the luxury of 
existence. To be immured in the cloister was to be lifted 
to God. The most hideous and doleful devices became 
his types of the beautiful, and wailing was his sweetest 
music. He loved to dwell in cells where he could not 
stand erect, but must kneel or lie prostrate. He loved to 
pour out his soul in floods of tears, and groans of sorrow. 
The hymns which he wrote might have been composed 
among the tombs. His spirit was not certainly at one 
with the joyous and serene temper of Theresa, but she 
saw that there was genuine piety under his morbid asceti- 
cism, and knew that he could be useful in bringing back 
to the degenerate order of Mount Carmel its ancient 
sanctity. She defended him against ridicule and calumny, 
aided him to keep good courage, and mourned in touching 
stanzas his untimely death. 

We cannot dwell upon the labors of Theresa in the 



ST. THERESA. 293 



hard task of legislating for the convents which she had 
founded. Her discipline was an admirable union of 
variety and simplicity in the proper duties of the monastic 
life. Prayer was to be the beginning and end, the great 
purpose of the life of every day. At five o'clock in sum- 
mer and six in winter each member of the sisterhood was 
to commence her morning devotions, to which one hour 
must be given. The more perfect and fervent were to 
pray alone in their cells ; the more gay and light, together. 
After the prayer the nuns were to recite a chant according 
to the season, select passages from the Breviary or daily 
service of the Church. Then all retired to their cells, to 
work there in silence until the call to mass. At eight or 
nine this service was held in the chapel. Then before 
dinner, which, except at seasons of fasting, was taken 
early in the day at ten, a quarter of an hour was spent in 
self-examination, in which the recluse was to call up every 
thought or emotion of sin since she awoke. Then came 
the dinner of the simplest food, of fish, or eggs, or common 
vegetables. Then until two o'clock the ordinary labors of 
the day went on in the common hall, and discreet conver- 
sation was permitted. At two came the service of Vespers, 
after which all retired to their cells, to spend the hours 
before the evening meal, in the reading of spiritual books 
and meditation upon the great Christian doctrines. At 
six they supped together. At eight came another hour of 
mental prayer, followed by another period of self-examina- 
tion. At eleven the final signal was given, all lights were 
extinguished, and the convent day was closed. So ran the 
order, day by day, throughout the year. 

Theresa did not choose for her severe discipline those 
who were naturally of a sombre and sorrowful spirit, but 
rather those of joyous and happy temper. She wanted 
those whose hearts were buoyant enough to bear all their 
trials and hardships, those who could endure reproof, and 
keep good courage. She preferred the young and strong 
to those already broken by infirmities. Feeble always in 
her own physical frame, she loved to have around those in 
whom piety should have a substantial house to dwell in. 
She loved to hear the fresh and confident tones of health 
pouring out the words of prayer. Severe in her reprimand, 



294 ST. THERESA. 



she was kind in her encouragement. She searched the 
hearts of all her companions and nothing was so offensive 
as the least sign of falsehood. That element of Jesuit 
morality which makes all things lawful when done to the 
glory of God, did not enter into Theresa's schemes. She 
used to say " that our Lord is a great lover of humility, 
because he is a great lover of truth ; and humility is a 
certain truth, by which we know how little we are, and 
that we have no good of ourselves." She required as the 
first condition of entrance into her convents a complete 
self-renunciation. There must be no evasions, no reser- 
vations, no retaining of any earthly love or any earthly 
treasure. God must have the whole heart, or the candi- 
date would find no room in her house. Sometimes this 
scruple seems to us extreme, as when one day, a. young 
girl, distinguished for piety and as it seemed to others 
every way adapted to the ascetic life, applied for admis- 
sion. A time was assigned for her entering, but as on the 
eve of the day appointed the novice took leave of Theresa, 
she modestly added, " My mother, I will bring to-morrow 
a little Bible which I have." " A Bible, my child," quickly 
replied Theresa, " Do not come here then, for we have no 
need of you or of your Bible. We are nothing but poor 
ignorant women who know how only to spin, and do as we 
are ordered." Theresa saw that the novice had not the 
perfect spirit of submission, and her biographer, who tells 
the story, praises her penetration in rejecting one who 
afterwards became subject to the penalties of the Inquisi- 
tion. 

The judgment of Theresa concerning her novice was 
not superficial. She did not decide hastily, but watched 
and waited. "You make me smile," she writes to a friend. 
the Father Mariano, " when you say that you can tell the 
character of a girl only by looking at her. We are not 
so easy to understand, we women, and whoever has been 
confessor to any one for a term of years is astonished to 
find that he knows so little about us." She did not form 
her idea of fitness from the present tastes of her appli- 
cants, but from their radical tendencies. She preferred 
often to take her nuns from the houses of opulence and 
worldliness than from straitened fortune and pious educa- 



ST. THERESA. 295 



tion. She did not reject the timid, nor did she always 
accept the brave. It is told how at the first foundation of 
the convent at Salamanca on the night of All Saints, 1570, 
she took with her a companion older than herself, who 
lay awake all night, trembling in the cold air, at the noise 
of the students in their carousing, and the bells tolling 
solemnly in their towers. I could not help laughing, says 
Theresa, when I woke at midnight, and saw my poor 
friend with eyes open and in such a fright. What are you 
thinking of, my sister, that you do not sleep, I asked. " I 
was thinking," she answered, "what you would do if I 
should die here, and leave you alone." My sister, I 
answered, when that comes I shall find well enough what 
to do. 

We have left but little space to speak of the personal 
character of Theresa. Nor is it needful. For her native 
temper was so changed and subdued by the spirit of her 
mission that she stands out to us rather the type of an idea 
than as a distinct personality. She embodies for us the 
Christian devotee, the idea of Catholic piety in its extreme 
manifestation. To restore the spirit of prayer to the 
Church, she lived, she labored, she wrote, she suffered. 
This makes the basis of her praise and the authority for 
her sainthood. For this the poetry of the Church cele- 
brates her name in those hymns adopted into its service, 
which twice in each year are sung in every Catholic Church 
throughout the world. So religious art depicts her, giving 
no expression to the features or the figure, but centering 
all the interest in the symbols which surrounded her, the 
floating cloud which bears her up, the anchor at her feet, 
the Bible on her lap, the vase of incense and the wreath 
of flowers on either side, the sun around her head, the 
cross held in the left hand, and the flaming heart raised 
high in the right hand, the emblems of a concentrated 
and entire devotion. She was the instance, if Christian 
history affords us any instance, of prayer without ceasing. 

If she was a bigot in faith, rejoicing over the punish- 
ment of heretics, and ready to consent to the severest 
measures, this temper sprung not from a malicious heart, 
but from the very earnestness and glow of her faith. To 
her there was* no salvation except where Christ and his 



296 ST, THERESA. 



Gospel might be found, in the pale of the ancient Church. 
The very elements of the Reform were odious to her, be- 
cause they seemed to set reason above authority, and 
knowledge above piety. Dispute about dogmas seemed 
to her to destroy spiritual life. It was earthly, sensual,, 
devilish. The fervor of Theresa's love made her abhor 
all separation from the source of love and peace. She 
felt called upon to warn the Church of the pestilence of 
heresy, lest it should be turned by this away from the 
sweet fountains of grace. She was not a natural combat- 
ant, and could not wield gracefully the weapons of con- 
troversy. Rapture, some will say rhapsody, was her 
proper sphere. She loved to fly and soar in the upper 
sky of mystic thought, and here she stands first in the 
number of those who have prophesied concerning things 
visible to the inner sense. We can find among the mystics 
themselves no one who offers with her a fair parallel. 
Madame Guyon was also a Catholic, but a woman of 
larger culture, of wider sympathies and sweeter soul. In 
her case, Protestants forget the recluse in loving the 
woman, while in the case of Theresa, Catholics forget the 
woman in marvelling at the devotee. George Fox had 
visions and meditations, and a temper too, not unlike those 
of the Spanish Saint, but he was an active, healthy man, 
not careless of the world, though he prophesied about the 
spirit, while she was a weak, sick woman, despising the 
world and longing ever for rest. There are books of 
Protestants, of the German Boehmen, and the Englishman 
Law, which maybe placed for obscurity, for ardent pas- 
sion toward Christ, for elevation of thought and style, by 
the side of her " Castle of the Soul," but on the whole, 
there is no mystical writer so far removed from the tone 
of Protestant thought and from the fair comprehension of 
Protestant readers. 

The culture of Theresa was defective. She had studied 
the pietism of the Church too faithfully to catch those 
graces of fancy, which adorn the pages of Christian 
classics. Yet with such a fiery faith, she must have spoken 
in verse. Her poetry is scant, and not of the purest, not 
musical so much as earnest and lyrical. It is rather the 
scream of an eaglet than the song of a nightingale ; yet 



ST. THERESA. 297 



it has found admirers even among Christian scholars. 
Her famous song, " Muero porque no muero," which her 
French biographer has rendered into prose, I have tried 
in vain to adapt to any English metre which should pre- 
serve at once its form and meaning. I give only a single 
elegiac song of her early life, which Mr. Longfellow has 
translated with more elegance than literal accuracy. It is 
the sonnet beginning "No me mueve, mi Dios, pava 
quererte : " 

'Tis not thy terrors, Lord, thy dreadful frown, 

Which keep my step in duty's narrow path, 

'Tis not the awful threatenings of thy wrath, 

But that in Virtue's sacred smile alone, 

I find a peace or happiness, Thy light 

In all its prodigality, is shed 

Upon the worthy and the unworthy head , 

And thou dost wrap in misery's stormy night, 

The holy as the thankless. All is well ; 

Thy wisdom has to each his portion given ; 

Why should our hearts by selfishness be riven ; 

'Tis vain to murmur, daring to rebel ; 

Lord, I would fear thee, though I feared not hell ; 

And love Thee, though I had no hope of heaven. 

The last days of the life of Theresa were a strange 
triumph for the worn-out woman. As she went on her 
journeys now crowds flocked around her carriage, the 
roads were lined with kneeling men and women, and nuns 
sang Te Deums as she entered their city. It was too much 
for her, and as she stopped at Alva on her return from 
Burgos, where her last monastery was founded and where 
she had met these honors, the spirit told her that her time 
had come. None could more gladly welcome the death- 
angel. I will not tell what Catholic credulity has related 
of the prodigies of her dying, of the luminous globe, the 
dove and the miraculous fragrance as her last breath was 
drawn. She died in the arms of a sister nun. Her last 
grasp was on the cross. Her last breath was prayer. The 
day of her death, October 4, 1582, is memorable as the 
day on which Pope Gregory changed the calendar, adding 
eleven days to the year. The Church celebrates her 
festival on the fifteenth of October. 

Many years ago I chanced to reside for a few months in 



298 ST. THERESA. 



the city of Baltimore. When. I first arrived, society was 
all in commotion about some awful stories which had been 
circulated about a nunnery in a retired street of that city. 
The churches were alive with denunciation and horror, 
and the ablest preachers were not ashamed to rouse the 
worst passions of the people against the iniquity of the 
convent system. A public investigation was made, the 
convent doors were opened, their mystic retreats invaded 
and their secrets unveiled. Nothing was found but a few 
poor women, in coarse garments, with sandalled feet, sur- 
rounded by the symbols of Catholic piety, and owning a 
few pictures of a Spanish virgin. The excitement sub- 
sided and the reaction came. They ceased to talk about 
the wickedness of the Carmelite convent, in admiration of 
the simple piety discovered there. And when I left the 
city a revival was in full progress in the same churches 
which had before been loudest in denunciation, and the 
preachers of violence were praying with the new converts 
around their altars. 

So the exposition now of the spirit of the founders of 
that convent will do its best office if, in revealing the nar- 
rowness and bareness of her religious life, it awakens in 
our hearts a more quick and living glow of devotion, if we 
leave the cloister which we curiously entered to feel more 
our need of the piety of the Spanish Saint. 



LOYOLA. 299 



XII. 

IGNATIUS LOYOLA. 

On the twenty-seventh day of September, 1540, the 
chief bishop of the Christian world signed the charter of 
a new religious order to be called the Society of Jesus. 
It was a duty more agreeable to the Catholic than the 
ruler. For while the rules of discipline and breadth of 
purpose might prophecy for this order a vast efficiency for 
the faith, the power of its autocratic head might easily grow 
into rivalship with the Supreme Pontificate. Great as might 
be the service of this new order, would not its influence 
and its holiness eclipse yet the proper light of the Church ? 
The Pope hesitated long before he gave sanction to a force 
so mighty either for weal or woe. The condition of the 
monastic orders then would hardly justify more in that 
kind. They had ceased, even the most ascetic, to sustain 
the failing piety of the Church or to offer signal examples 
of virtue. Knowledge had forsaken the Benedictine 
cloisters to illumine the unhallowed labors of heretical 
scholars, and men ceased to remember the folios of Bernard 
in amazement at the wit and learning of Erasmus and 
Bucer. Zeal had become dark and narrow in the Domini- 
can heart, a zeal for destruction more than for conversion ; 
and the followers of the Spanish Saint were content to 
omit the apostolic duties in the cruel tasks of the Inquisi- 
tion. Charity had ceased to designate the Grey Friars of 
St. Francis. They swarmed in the streets of cities as 
drones and beggars more than ministers of bounty. 

In the degradation of the monastic orders, there might 
seem to the good sense of the Church but little hope of 
restoring the piety or the purity of the Christian world by 
new experiments in that kind. And Paul III, a sagacious 
and prudent Pontiff, would gladly have escaped commit- 
ting himself to a decision which might prove a fatal error 
for the peace and unity of the Church within, while it 



3°° LOYOLA. 



would fail to strengthen it without. But he was overruled 
by the pressing instances of his cardinals, backed by the 
earnest persuasions of more than one Catholic king. The 
dangers of the time were represented, a vigorous and 
triumphant heresy constantly advancing upon the central 
home of Catholic faith, the defection of learning, the un- 
certain loyalty of rulers, the monstrous and patent abuses, 
for which there could be neither apology nor veil ; all de- 
manding some instant remedy. It was urged that an order 
like this now proposed would give to the Church that new 
ability which it most needed in the crisis ; teachers for the 
young where teaching had become obsolete, priests who 
should differ from the world by their holiness, and not by 
their dress or manners; an order in which the active and 
contemplative life were most admirably harmonized; an 
order fitted by its elastic method and comprehensive plan 
for all situations and duties. These arguments had their 
weight with his Holiness. But the chief argument was 
the presence in Rome of the men who solicited this boon, 
the spectacle of their zeal, their fervor, their self-sacrifice, 
and their perseverance. The founder of the Society of 
Jesus owed its establishment not to the friendship of any 
kings or cardinals, but to the persistence of his own re- 
solve. 

Six years had passed since, on the heights of Mont- 
martre in Paris, on the very spot where tradition had 
placed the death of the Apostle of France, seven teachers 
and students in the schools of Paris bound themselves by 
an original vow into a new religious union. Before the 
holy sacrifice which one of their number celebrated, they 
repeated in turn the solemn pledge of perpetual poverty 
and chastity, and added to this the vow that they would 
become absolute servants of the Holy Pontiff, to go into 
whatever land he should send them. The vow was sealed 
by the transformed body of the Redeemer which they ate. 
No others were near to witness the terrible earnestness of 
that oath. But no one who joined in it ever forgot it, or 
lost the thrill of its memory. Never since the Apostles 
broke bread in that upper room with their Master, did so 
remarkable a band kneel together. Never were the sacred 
elements pledge of a more vital purpose and union. In 



LOYOLA. 30 



that chapel of the martyrs the society was born which 
should restore the ancient work of the Church and realize 
that divine commission which sends Evangelists into every 
land. The greatest of modern Catholic saints, and the 
greatest of all uninspired apostles were kneeling there to- 
gether. By the side of the accomplished scholar and the 
consecrated priest, were the flower of Spanish chivalry 
and the worn frame of a shattered soldier, in the persons 
of Francis Xavier and Ignatius Loyola. A society to 
which two such spirits were pledged was fated from the 
first to be mighty in the world, to defend religion at home 
as it had never been defended, and to carry it on the earth 
farther than it had ever gone. 

A hard and long experience had prepared the leader of 
this band for the great work he was here beginning. From 
his hereditary temper, a scion of the noble Spanish house 
of Loyola was fitted to command. Catholic biographers 
delight to show how the very accident of birth seemed to 
predict the eminence of the Jesuit father. In the year 
1 49 1, the same year in which Columbus gained from the 
rulers of Castile and Arragon a sanction for his Western 
voyage, the Knight of Loyola gave the name of Ignatius 
to his new born son, the last of eleven children, and in 
1497, when Vasco de Gama sailed first to the East to find 
the region of spices and gold and conquer it for Portugal, 
Francis Xavier was born to conquer these realms hereafter 
for a holier ruler. Between the career of the chief Re- 
formers and the lives of these saints they reckon also 
other coincidences. When Luther was meditating in the 
Wartburg his libels against the monastic state, and con- 
triving how the faithful might be turned from their 
obedience, Ignatius, in the solitude of Manresa, was com- 
posing those spiritual exercises which should regenerate 
the life of the cloister and vindicate its superior beauty. 
When Calvin studied at Paris how to destroy the ancient 
faith, Ignatius was learning there how to defend it. And 
in 1534, the year that Henry of England prohibited all 
his subjects from naming the name of any Pope as spiritual 
lord, Ignatius and his companions took that vow which 
made the Pope wholly their lord, body, soul, and spirit, to 
be obeyed in the least or the greatest requirement alike. 



302 LOYOLA. 

Ignatius was educated by his martial father and brother 
to the profession of arms, and soon became conspicuous 
for his skill and gallantry in the arts of war. The promise 
of his youth was of an eminent soldier and a brilliant 
cavalier. But an accident at the siege of Pampeluna 
saved for the world a spiritual hero. A cannon shot re- 
bounding from the wall broke his right leg, and bruised 
its fellow. In this helpless condition, the blundering of the 
army surgeons first setting the limb badly, and then being 
obliged to break it again, gave chance to St. Peter to in- 
terpose by miracle in his favor. On the eve of that mar- 
tyr's feast, he was supposed to be dying, but in a dream 
the Saint appeared to him, touched the wounded part, 
and when he awoke he found the bones restored to their 
places, and his cure complete. St. Peter's surgery, how- 
ever, was not perfect. A fragment of bone still protruded 
at the knee, and fearful self-inflicted agonies were tried by 
the proud young knight to relieve a deformity so fatal. 
With great firmness he waited while the bone was sawed 
off, and for many days lay stretched upon a rack which 
should draw him into shape again. But St. Peter was not 
to be so baffled, and his lameness became permanent. 

In the long confinement which ensued, the mind of 
Ignatius was beguiled by such books as the castle of his 
ancestors could furnish. The romances of chivalry then 
abounded in the chambers of Spanish nobles. With these 
he was from childhood familiar. But now by chance there 
was handed to him a book of the Saints, in which he could 
read the achievements of the knights of the cross, and 
see what devotion and service self-denying faith had ren- 
dered to the most blessed of women, the mother of God. 
From his reading came strange meditations. Contending 
feelings disturbed his soul. On one side visions of 
worldly grandeur and honor, of a place at court, and 
marriage with a rich Castilian whom he loved. And over 
against these, thoughts of ascetic denial, of the beauty of 
humility and the glory of apostleship. Should he be a 
noble in the king's house and partake of temporal abun- 
dance, or should he be like Jerome and Basil a hermit in 
Palestine, and live upon spiritual food ? From this he 
began to reason upon and compare his sensations. He 



LOYOLA. 3°3 



found that his worldly visions had but transitory bliss, and 
left vacancy, bitterness, and disgust behind them; while, 
as spiritual thoughts subsided, a very sweet comfort, and 
peace and joy filled the chambers of his soul. Was it not 
better, then, once for all to renounce the world and be- 
come a child of God? Wonderful prodigies aided his 
desire to answer that question. At night, as he prayed, 
the house was shaken, and the wall of his chamber was 
rent. Holy Mary with Jesus in her arms, came and 
smiled upon him. His ecstasy grew daily. His kindred 
became troubled. But their expostulation only added fire 
to his devout zeal. Hardly were his wounds healed, when 
he set out on a pilgrimage which he intended to close only 
at Jerusalem, but as yet he was unfit for that sacred journey. 
He had to pass through a course of spiritual discipline 
and physical endurance, before he was worthy to trace 
the steps of the crucified Saviour and to kneel where he 
knelt in his agony. 

And the austerities which Ignatius practised were enough 
to subdue the strongest lusts of the heart. All the tor- 
ments which his fancy could invent his patience endured. 
His horse was soon given away, and his sword hung up 
before the altar of the convent of Montserrat in token 
that his secular warfare was relinquished for the service of 
Christ. A beggar whom he met received his fine clothes 
in exchange for ragged garments, and great was the sorrow 
of Ignatius to find that his gift of humility and charity 
had caused the arrest of the poor man as a thief. His 
food was of the meanest kind, boiled herbs sprinkled with 
ashes. His girdle was a band of iron, a hair shirt was his 
raiment, and his bed was the ground. His chosen com- 
panions were the beggars of the streets and the sick of 
most loathsome diseases. The children hooted at him as 
he went creeping along, asking his alms in the basest 
tone ; and they flung stones after him. One day he was 
found lying nearly dead in a foul cavern which he had 
chosen for his abode, and was carried into the hospital. 
But his bitter experience grew heavier in his soul. He 
was weighed down and crushed by the burden of his sins, 
frequently almost maddened. Long fasting, constant 
penance, much meditation, brought him no relief. To the 



304 LOYOLA. 



lassitude of frequent fevers, succeded the worse prostra- 
tion of deeper melancholy. Only celestial visions revived 
him. In a trance which lasted seven days, the chief of 
the mysteries were exposed to his view. He saw the Holy 
Trinity dividing to each other their marvellous work, and 
ordaining the system of Nature and of man. He saw the 
great wonder of Redemption illustrated, and how it was 
with the miracle of the mass. 

In the rapture of his prayers all the glories of heaven 
and earth seemed to open before him, and he came out 
from his days of vision renewed in spirit and furnished for 
his religious work. He exchanged now his hours of sor- 
row for hours of study. He addressed himself to able 
teachers who could best impart the science of the spirit, 
and such was his proficiency that the learner soon be- 
came a master, and discovered to his guides what dis- 
ciplined piety could do in overcoming the defects of 
scholastic training. His hours of meditation were varied 
by the composition of the book of spiritual exercises. 
This remarkable treatise on the discipline of the Christian, 
if we consider the facts of its authorship, is more wonder- 
ful, because more authentic, than the revelations in our 
time of the Poughkeepsie seer. By the sanction of a Pope 
this book became afterward a manual for the faithful, and 
it is the boast of Jesuits to-day that it has prepared more 
souls for the kingdom of heaven than any uninspired 
volume. Books of meditation had been common before 
in the Church, and in some convents whole shelves were 
filled with them. The deep devotion of Thomas a Kempis 
had long directed the reverie of pious believers, but the 
Exercises of Loyola are on a new plan. They systematize 
the method of conversion. They divide the needful medi- 
tation into periods. In four weeks the soul of the believer 
with their help may pass through the necessary stages. In 
the first week he is made to go over his past life and see 
his un worthiness, his baseness, his awful wickedness, and 
the sure hell which opens before him. From this he is to 
turn in the second week to the story of Christ; and con 
trasting the armies of Christ and Satan, to choose delib- 
erately which standard he will bear. In the third week, 
the contemplation is to be of the woe from which Jesus 



LOYOLA. 3°5 



saved the race of man and of his deep humiliation. And 
from this, at last, in the fourth week, the soul is to rise to 
heavenly imaginations and mystic flights, and spiritual 
songs, and to behold the perfect beauty of the regenerate 
state and of a life hid with Christ in God. 

The most remarkable feature of the Spiritual Exercises 
of Ignatius is their union of devout speculation with 
practical good sense. They deal with the human soul in 
its actual condition. They take man on his own ground 
and reason from his consciousness and experience. Do 
you hesitate, says he to the convert, whether to choose be- 
tween Christ or the world ? What advice would you give 
in such a case to your dearest friend ? Or which would 
you choose on your own death-bed ? He would not trust 
to the sudden raptures of an hour of exhilaration, and 
his book offsets the fanaticism of instantaneous conversion. 
To its religious value not only the testimonies of the 
Jesuit order and of the Catholic Church but the numerous 
imitations of Protestants bear witness. The luxuriant 
scholarship of an English prelate, the plain, pious wisdom 
of an English Dissenter, and the spiritual science of a 
German professor have chosen the model of Ignatius as a 
frame-work for their finest productions, and whoso de- 
lights in Tholuck's hours of Christian devotion, or Dod- 
dridge's Rise and Progress, or Taylor's Holy Living and 
Dying, drinks of water from the fountains which were 
opened to the soul of the Spanish zealot in the solitude of 
Manresa. 

Ten months spent in prayers, meditations and austeri- 
ties had fitted Ignatius to continue his journey. Rapidly he 
passed through the Italian cities, wondering at the splen- 
dor of the Easter festival, and saddened by the visible 
corruption of the Church which he loved. The charm of 
Venice could not detain the Christian pilgrim. Yet his zeal 
in prayer did not prevent him from observing the wickedness 
of the sailors in his ship and openly rebuking it. After 
numerous striking adventures his feet at last touched the 
soil of the Sacred Land. Soon the holiest spots were 
familiar. He stood before the Temple Hill and groaned 
in spirit that infidel w r orship should profane that shrine of 
the nations. He knelt where Jesus had knelt in the 
20 



3°6 LOYOLA. 

garden. And thrice he traced the foot-prints of the sufferer 
who bore along the painful track of the Olive mountain 
the great curse of a fallen race. May we not believe that 
there indeed, as he declares, was revealed to him the 
vision of a new Evangel, of another company, who from 
the witness of trial, pain, and sacrifice should go out, like 
the first disciples, to convert the world to God ? He, too, 
had reached now the age when the Saviour of men was 
called to suffer and die. Might not his suffering now 
begin the era of a new regeneration ? But he had been 
trained in the school of obedience, and though his heart 
longed to begin in Palestine the conversion of the impious 
followers of Mohammed, yet the command of the Fran- 
ciscan ruler there sent him speedily back to his native 
shore. 

And now began a regular course of preparation for the 
great plan which he had conceived. He needed to learn 
the wisdom of the Fathers, and to gain sufficient human 
knowledge to fit him for influence over the minds of men. 
He could not be a priest without the Latin tongue, and 
with the little boys he went to school to learn it. One 
favorite word seemed to give him the key at once to the 
hardest intricacies and the highest delights of his study, 
and the inflexions of the verb amo were to him of deeper 
significance than the jest which custom commonly makes 
of them. "To love " was to love God. "To be loved " 
was to feel God's love. Amabam, "I was loving, " recalled 
to him sorrowfully past states of spiritual rapture, and 
amabo, "I shall love," restored him by its glorious promise. 
The school of Barcelona was changed two years later for 
the new University, where Ignatius soon became learned 
enough in the various sciences to be accused of heresy. 
His exceeding sanctity became suspicious. His style of 
thought seemed novel and dangerous. His love for Eras- 
mus was hardly consistent with a pure and undoubting 
faith, and there were not wanting those who ascribed his 
influence in healing the diseases and winning the souls of 
the poor and the profligate alike, to arts of magic. The 
imprisonment of forty-two days which he suffered gave 
him a delightful season of prayer. And he asked nothing 
better than that God would graciously multiply to him 



LOYOLA. 3°7 



trials in the flesh and the hatred of the wicked. He was 
released only to beg more humbly, to preach more openly, 
and commend to men with more earnestness the virtues 
of the Saviour. 

In the year 1528, we find him at Paris, whither he had 
travelled on foot in mid-winter, entering on a seven years' 
course of study in the University of that city. His means 
were supplied by begging in the streets. In the vacations 
he would go even to Holland and England to gather for 
his companions and himself the means of subsistence. 
He gained very soon great influence among his com- 
panions, awakening a new spirit of prayer, and encourag- 
ing a broader aim of study. It is told how the master of 
his studies, who had ordered for him a public whipping, 
publicly knelt and begged his forgiveness. New and 
strange methods he adopted to touch the hearts of sinners, 
sometimes joining in their sports, sometimes doing penance 
for their sins. He chose a wicked priest as his confessor 
and so made this man see his own wickedness. No scene 
could be so horrible or so disgusting that he did not nerve 
himself to endure it, till the sight of his resolute valor 
shamed the feebleness of his companions. One by one 
congenial friends attached themselves to his study and 
life. Faber the priest, and Xavier the brilliant worldling, 
James Laynes, a master of many tongues and all philoso- 
phies, Alonzo Salmeron, and Nicholas Bobadilla, youths 
of the highest promise, with Simon Rodrigues, all except 
the first and last, Spaniards of noble birth, became the 
elect members of his society. The new company of Jesus 
on the heights of Montmartre, numbered around their 
leader only half as many as met in the chamber at Jeru- 
salem. 

The vow taken by the brethren on the day of Assump- 
tion was followed up by assiduous exercises of penitence 
and prayer. It was agreed that their studies should finally 
close on the twenty-fifth of January 1537, when they 
would meet at Venice and surrender themselves to the 
Pope for such service as he might think fit to employ 
them. The conversion of the heathen was their principal 
hope 3 but they were ready to labor in schools, in hospitals, 
in prisons, or wheresoever the interests of Christ's cause 



308 LOYOLA. 



might most demand them. No property was any one to 
own; but the gifts of the charitable were to be their de- 
pendence. Henceforward all their knowledge, all their 
eloquence, all their discipline were to be for Christ and 
God, and not for selfish glory. If the renown of sanctity 
joined itself to :.iis devoted band, the slanders of envy 
were not wanting. Ridicule followed those who would 
give up to this chimera the solid honors of science. It 
seemed insanity to endure so much for the dream of saving 
a world so corrupt. The day was too late for a new dif- 
fusion of the Gospel. The experiment had been tried 
too often. And though Ignatius might be received by his 
kindred with the reverence due to his suffering and his 
holiness, he had to meet entreaties and reproofs for wasting 
the vigor of his life on so hopeless a vision. But no re- 
bukes or persuasions could quench in his soul the sacred 
fire. He knew what he meant to do. He had meat to 
eat which they knew not of. And the temptation of his 
castle walls could not seduce him back to a life which his 
heart had long forsaken. On the eighth of January of the 
appointed year, he met at Venice the companions of his 
choice with three more who had been added to their 
number. There they received ordination to the priest- 
hood, and on Christmas of that year Ignatius Loyola said 
his first mass at the altar. 

It was essential to obtain from the Pope the public 
sanction of their order, and we have before alluded to the 
long delay and the weighty reasons which prevented them 
from entering so soon as they wished upon their work. 
But they were not idle in the interval. Like the Saviour, 
they went about among the villages of Italy preaching, 
teaching, healing the sick, and showing the example of 
self-denying lives. The principles of their order were 
digested and developed. Their vows were renewed, and 
when the bull "regimini" was issued from the Vatican on 
the twenty-seventh of September, 1540, they were prepared 
with unanimous voice to choose Ignatius general of their 
order, and swear to him perfect and instant obedience. 
Twice he refused the offer. But finding, at last, through 
the lips of his confessor, that he was called by God to the 
charge, he waived his scruples and consented to rule the 



LOYOLA. 3°9 



society which he had founded. The name which he gave 
it was "'the Society of Jesus;"' for the divine Saviour had 
appeared to him on his journey, bearing a cross, but with 
brow all radiant with light and had said, as to Paul of old, 
"Go on, Ignatius, I will be favorable to you at Rome." 
His task was now to give a constitution to the new brother- 
hood, to increase its numbers and to prove its missionary 
purpose. Scarcely had its charter been given, when 
Francis Xavier sailed from Lisbon on that mission beside 
which all labors of Evangelists since the days of Paul and 
Peter are insignificant. Another of the band. Hoves, was 
speedily translated by death and Ignatius was able to tell 
from a vision which he saw before the altar that their 
society had already a representative with the saints in 
heaven, and with Christ, whose name they bore. Soon 
the Catholic princes of the world began to solicit some of 
these laborers of Christ to awaken the faith of their 
kingdoms. The numbers of the community increased so 
rapidly that in a few years no part of the Catholic world 
was left unvisited by them. They penetrated to the 
heretical lands of Flanders and Britain. They taught the 
Christian slaves in Morocco and along the African shore. 
In Portugal the sovereign gave them the chief direction of 
religion, and the Indians of Canada and Brazil heard 
from their lips the same holy faith to which thousands 
listened on the coasts of Malacca, Japan and Sumatra. 
They were present in the assemblies of the Church to 
watch and guide the course of affairs. They were present 
in the courts of kings to remind monarchs of their duty 
to a higher ruler. Men saw them ministering to disease 
in its most loathsome forms, and braving the most fatal 
dangers of pestilence, war, and famine. Habited like 
common priests, they were found where no priests would 
go, and lived a life which few priests lived. Their numer- 
ous colleges became to the nations seminaries of the 
soundest learning. It was a principal feature in their 
plan that they should educate the children of every 
Catholic land and rear so a generation of true believers. 
In the view of Ignatius, all education which was not Chris- 
tian was worthless, and no education could be called 
Christian which did not, alons: with the sciences of the 



3 10 LOYOLA. 



world, teach the better science of spiritual discipline 
and absolute obedience to Christ in his Church. 

The constitution which Ignatius gave to his new society 
shows his remarkable wisdom, penetration, and practical 
skill. It borrowed all the good points of the other monas- 
tic systems, omitting their defects and supplying their 
deficiencies. In government he made it an elective des- 
potism. The power of the general was absolute and entire 
over all the other officers and members. To him universal 
obedience was due, subject however to the negative of 
the Supreme Pontiff. Only the Pope could absolve a 
Jesuit from the duty of submission. There were various 
grades of membership. One month of confession and 
prayer was to precede all study in the order. Then came 
two years of novitiate, in which the duties without the 
vows of the order were laid upon them, and it could be 
decided whether they were fit for the order or the order fit 
for them. If this probation is satisfactory, then the novice 
is admitted to take the three ordinary vows of poverty, 
chastity, and obedience, and to be called a religious man, 
though not a perfect Jesuit. He is now subject to the orders 
of the general. He must work and study where his 
place is assigned, but he is only an assistant, a spiritual co- 
adjutor in the house of Ignatius. A long trial must prove 
his fitness to take the fourth irrevocable crowning vow of 
entire submission to the will of the Pope. He then be- 
comes one of the "professed," and is liable to any burden 
or any fate which it may please his superiors to set upon 
him. None proceed to this last degree except such as are 
accomplished in study and endurance, furnished and dis- 
ciplined for the hardest Christian work. 

The company was to have many hands, but a single 
will and a single mind. And this end was reached by a 
system of mutual confession. Every inferior told all his 
thoughts, desires, and acts at once to the brother above 
him, and with him this revelation need not be secret, but 
he had the right to hand it upward to the head of the 
order. Every rector of a college and every ruler of a 
province had to report monthly to the general, and once 
in three years to give an account of all the Jesuits in his 
dominion. The general was chosen for life, and could not 



LOYOLA. 3 11 



be resisted or deposed except by the congregation of the 
whole order. Five assistants help him to prepare work 
and assign the tasks for the brethren. No man can be 
admitted member who has come from any other religious 
order, from the Carmelite, Theatine, Franciscan, or even 
from the regular priesthood, for Ignatius wished no divided 
love in the heart of any Jesuit. No man once a member 
can accept any religious honor, neither bishop's seat nor 
cardinal's hat ; he must decline all titles or authority but 
that which his vows have bestowed. Even for the Papacy 
he is not a lawful candidate, and must refuse it if offered. 
Unlike the other monastic systems, the constitution of the 
Jesuits subjected the heart and will, and not the habits of 
its members. They might choose their own dress, their 
own litany, their own method of penance, prayer, and 
praise. They might follow that course of life which suited 
best their natural bent, might be politicians, soldiers, 
students, orators, physicians, even traders, if they would 
only keep true to their vows, remember in all things the 
good of Christ's cause, and receive the command of the 
superior as the sovereign voice of Christ. 

In the Jesuit institution the duties of the active and 
contemplative life are admirably balanced. There is 
room for all the agonies of penitence, and raptures of en- 
thusiasm, but they are prevented from excess by contact 
with the practical affairs of life. The followers of Loyola 
were to be in the world, but not of it. They were to pre- 
pare for the joys of the saints to come by dealing with 
sinners now. No convents were given them to dwell in. 
The House of the Professed which was assigned in Rome 
to their Order by the Pope, was not a monastery, but a 
sort of headquarters to the order. If the general dwelt 
there it was rather as a king dwells in his castle, than as a 
prior in his abbey. There the dispatches were opened 
and read from all parts of the world where the brethren 
were gone. Thence the decrees went out. It was a place 
of discipline indeed, stern, long, and constant. But the 
discipline was not monastic, only the choice of each indi- 
vidual for his own perfection. If the world did not much 
enter there, it was not because barred doors and grated 
windows, and an awful gravity seemed to shut it out, but 



312 LOYOLA. 



because the hearts of the brethren in that centre of light 
and holiness, so near to the great head of their company, 
were naturally filled with unworldly thoughts and pious 
emotions. There they knew that the holy father wrote 
and prayed, and there they believed that the Holy Spirit, 
with fiery tongue, descended to guide his pen as he com- 
posed his decrees, and to breathe through every sentence 
the glow and unction of a new apostle. Well might a 
more than convent silence reign, a more than cloistral 
piety be practised, in the house where the messages of a 
world's redemption were daily left. 

The system of study which Ignatius enjoined finely com- 
bined the spiritual and practical elements. It allowed all 
secular sciences, but required that all should be devoted 
to the glory of God. Every day mass was to be heacd by 
every scholar. Every exercise must begin with prayer. 
The writings of the Fathers must be made familiar to the 
students of philosophy. The native tongue of each nation 
should be studied in its colleges, and preachers should 
aim to give the Gospel in the most familiar speech. Igna- 
tius prized sanctity higher than learning, but he did not 
confound sanctity with ignorance. He required the sacri- 
fice of the heart and will, but not of the taste or intellect. 
He was glad to enlist logic or letters on the side of God's 
truth. He would encourage and develop individual traits 
of character while he brought his followers all to be one 
in Jesus. There were grades of proficiency among them, 
but not of honor or privilege. The child of noble parents 
should fare no better than the peasant's son, though he 
might bring his treasures as a gift to the altar. The use 
of ability, but not the claim of rank, were recognized in 
the Jesuit constitution. Whatsoever sphere of Christian 
labor any were best qualified to fill, to that should their 
powers be guided, whether to controversy or to instruction, 
whether to diplomacy or to alms-giving. There was no 
room in his scheme for any pride, the pride of holiness, 
of success or even of extreme humility. When all the 
command was fulfilled and the worn body and weary mind 
could labor no longer, the Society of Jesus were to say as 
their great Master had bidden, " We are unprofitable ser- 
vants. We have clone what it is our duty to do." 



LOYOLA. 3 l 3 

It is impossible to doubt the testimonies of the super- 
human zeal and energy with which Ignatius labored to 
establish in the hearts of his society the spirit of their 
vows and to extend their influence far and wide. And yet 
he was scrupulously watchful that no violations of the 
rule should take place, and that no unworthy members 
should be enlisted in the order. Often he rejected those 
who seemed most fit by their fervor and ascetic zeal, 
because he discovered elements of weakness in their na- 
ture. He could not be propitiated by flattery or deceived 
by intrigue. His keen eye detected pretenders to holiness 
beneath their mask, and his searching tests revealed every 
lurking remnant of selfish love. Yet he was not harsh 
towards those in whom worldliness seemed obstinately 
to linger. If he rejected them, it was without scorn 
or rebuke. Some whose natures were so light and trifling 
that spiritual exercises seemed to be shaken from their 
hearts as rain-drops from the branches, he encouraged to 
persevere, till at last their natures were subdued. He 
read almost intuitively the inner characters of his friends, 
and discovered often in the beginning what it took years 
of hard discipline to prove to the eyes of others. Often 
his disposition of one, or another to different spheres of 
duty seemed strange and of doubtful wisdom, but the 
event always vindicated his sagacity. He interpreted to 
all their proper office beneath their transient preference, 
and made them confess that he knew them better than 
they knew themselves. 

Ignatius had learned in his long course of trial and 
endurance one great virtue of a spiritual ruler, a stoical 
firmness. No catastrophes could frighten him, no persua- 
sions could move him. His fiery heart seemed wholly 
submissive to his calm and even will. He was every day 
the same, never joyful, never sad, receiving all tidings, 
whether of the success or failure of his plans, of new 
colleges founded, or the death of friends whom he trusted, 
with equal serenity. He was always ready for the busi- 
ness of the hour, whatever had been his most recent ex- 
perience. One evening a brother of his order came to 
speak with him about an important affair, but finding that 
Ignatius had just returned from a long and fruitless wait- 



314 LOYOLA. 



ing at the Papal court, postponed his business till the 
morrow. Explaining then the reason of his delay, he re- 
ceived such a reprimand that for a week he dared not look 
upon the face of the holy father. He could assume, in- 
deed, severity of countenance to give force to a rebuke, 
but was never betrayed into a loss of that majestic sweet- 
ness of look which awed while it fascinated every beholder. 
The expression of his countenance was one of deep, 
spiritual repose, and from his round black eye and furrowed 
brow there fell at once the expression of ineffable pity 
and immovable peace. The smile that was wanting on his 
closely drawn lips played over all his features, and seemed 
to his enthusiastic friends to touch them with an angel's 
grace, inspiring confidence, while it prevented a too near 
approach. They entered before him with fear, hardly 
daring to meet that still, abstracted, passionless gaze. 
But his gentle voice at once restored them. 

Few men have ever learned so completely to despise 
physical pain and danger. They tell how under a severe 
surgical operation he gave no sign of any suffering, either 
in quivering muscle or sound of complaint. One day 
descending a high flight of steps, he fell and was supposed 
to be killed, but he rose with no remark, not even looking 
behind him to see how the accident had chanced. He 
was not afraid of evil tidings. As he was conversing with 
some pious friends about heavenly things, a messenger 
came in suddenly in consternation and whispered some- 
thing in'his ear. " Very well," said Ignatius, and dismissed 
him, continuing for an hour longer without change the 
conversation which had been interrupted. At the moment 
of his leaving, some one ventured to ask if the messenger 
had not brought him some bad news. "Only this," said 
he, "that the officers have just come to seize our furniture 
in payment of a debt of a few crowns which we have con- 
tracted. But if they take our beds, we will sleep on the 
floor, which is very proper for poor people like us. I only 
hope that they will leave some of my papers. But if they 
take these I shall not quarrel about it." A story got 
round once that the Jesuits were encouraging a revolt 
against the Papal power and had a large quantity of arms 
stored in their house. Such a report might well be ex- 



LOYOLA. 3 J 5 



pected to vex, if anything could, the loyal heart of Igna- 
tius. But when the officers came, at the order of the Pope, 
to search the establishment, he conducted them into every 
room, and dismissed them with the same politeness that 
he would have shown to a visit of friendship. 

This firmness of temper in Ignatius manifested itself in 
great moderation and evenness of speech. He was not, 
like Luther, prodigal of words, or strong in his phrases of 
like and dislike. No one who has so won the attachment 
of his brethren ever praised so sparingly. No one ever 
blamed with less asperity. His words were choice, clear, 
and frank, but not copious ; truthful more than beautiful. 
It was what he said which they remembered, more than 
how he said it. He was specially careful to speak no ill 
of his enemies, whether in or out of the Church, and those 
who brought to his ear the floating calumnies of the world 
about himself and his order, did not hear the natural 
bitter reply. In all affairs of business, every syllable, in 
sense and sound, was maturely considered before it was 
uttered. And every letter which his secretary wrote he 
read over, examined and corrected. It is a remarkable 
circumstance in the life of Ignatius when you consider the 
manifold varieties of temper and character with which he 
dealt, and the important and delicate relations in which 
he was placed at once to his own brethren, to the Church, 
and to the world, that seldom, almost never, did a misun- 
derstanding arise from any thing which he said. His 
prudence of speech would have seemed almost miraculous, 
if his wisdom had not seemed so divine. 

And the reverence which his disciples had for the wis- 
dom of their general amounted quite to idolatry.- His 
slightest hint became for them a rule of action. A single 
word of encouragement from him was lasting joy to them. 
His spiritual exercises became for them a manual of devo- 
tion more sacred even than the work of Thomas a Kempis, 
which Catholics, and Ignatius more especially, prized next 
to the Bible. They knew that his scholarship would not 
compare with that of many doctors of the Church, or 
brethren of their own order, and inferred that his superior 
insight into heavenly truths must be the result of inspira- 
tion. Was that human skill merely that with such narrow 



316 LOYOLA. 



means of knowledge could declare a science beyond all 
the philosophy of the schools, could frame and organize a 
society of such wonderful poise and harmony, could give 
the reason so profoundly, while it showed the sacred issue 
so well of perfect humility and constant suffering ? His- 
common acts accordingly became miracles, and a long list 
of these is given by his biographers, though we may pro- 
fanely refuse to allow in them the miraculous element. 
He was worshipped as a saint before his death, and after- 
wards at the altar, one more daring than the rest, ventured 
to substitute in the mass for the name of Jesus, " Sante 
Ignati, ora pro nobis," "Holy Ignatius, pray for us." 
Even fragments of his dress, and the refuse of his nails 
were prized and worn as amulets. Francis Xavier, who 
wore around his neck a small bone of the Apostle Thomas, 
the first Evangelist of India, was accustomed to tear from 
the letters of Ignatius his signature, and fasten it to this 
bone that his teachings with the heathen might have more 
efficacy. And it is said that his letters in return were all 
written on his knees and bathed with his tears. Charles 
Spinola, a Jesuit who was roasted in Japan before a slow 
fire, gave to his friends as the last treasure with which he 
parted a small fragment which he had worn next his heart, 
of the shirt which Ignatius wore in the hard penances of 
the cell at Manresa. 

The radical and central virtue of the system which 
Ignatius gave to his order is humility. Upon this he based 
all other Christian graces. Even the practical rule of 
obedience must grow from this to contain any merit for 
him who observes it. He counted that obedience which 
was only the submission of a reluctant will to superior 
strength as of no moral worth. It must come always from 
a true humiliation of the mind, the heart and the will. 
His sharpest rebukes and his hardest penance were for 
those who paraded their holiness or claimed honor for it. 
He would not tolerate any boasting about success, any 
religious pride. Some of his followers were sent to the 
courts of kings, but not as to any more honorable station 
than with the heathen tribes. Though he contrived so 
skillfully the plan of the order that it should be sure to 
gain influence and power, to win souls, and secure for the 



LOYOLA. 3 l 7 



truth a favorable hearing, yet he dreaded a season of too 
great prosperity, and was accustomed to say that it would 
be sad for the brethren when they ceased to be persecuted. 
As the perfection of an artist is to conceal his art, so the 
perfect Jesuit virtue conceals its own humility. To reach 
the spiritual state one must become so humble that even 
one's own heart becomes accustomed to humility so far 
that it does not notice the virtue. 

Probably the world never saw a more extraordinary in- 
stance of the study and practice of this virtue than in the 
case of Ignatius Loyola. He differed from the old as- 
cetics in this, that whereas they sought the admiration of 
the multitude for their austerities, he courted the ridicule 
of men for his follies. He studied to gain the contempt 
of men, so far as he might without compromising his in- 
fluence for good. He would change his method of self- 
humiliation when he saw too much attention drawn to the 
method. His hardest mortifications were the most private. 
The tattered peasants garb in which he began his spiritual 
experiences, he exchanged afterwards for a decent robe, and 
men could not see in the grave, reserved countenance of 
the solitary priest who halted along the streets of Rome, 
the traits of that menial service he was every day per- 
forming. Few have ever been so favored with celestial 
visions, with the visits of angels, with the private consola- 
tions of the Son of God and his holy mother. Yet only 
his nearest friends, and they but sparingly, were privileged 
to know of these privileges. They were withheld, lest 
any might think their subject greater than his brethren. 
With a will as stern, and a soul as intolerant as that of 
Luther, Loyola never aimed to exalt himself in the eyes 
of his brethren. He was distressed by their praises, he 
thanked them when they dared to rebuke him. When the 
charitable were moved to leave their property or bring 
their gifts to the treasury, he rejoiced in it as an evidence 
of divine love. But no gifts would he accept for himself 
more than the simple requisites for food and raiment. 
The head of the Society of Jesus must be as his Master 
before, poor and friendless, and hungry, feeding only on 
the bread of life and through sweet communion with his 



Father in heaven. The title which he gave his followers 



318 LOYOLA. 



was "this least society," and his own favorite device was, 
" To the greater glory of God." 

The Society of Jesus was the first religious order since 
the time of the Apostles which had been organized on 
a truly philanthropic basis. Love to God here could 
not prove its sincerity except in practical love to man. 
The proper charter of the society was that closing text of 
the Saviour's word, "Go and teach all nations in the name 
of the Father and Son and Spirit." And herein it proved 
a strong bulwark against the Protestant movement. It 
had a more directly humane end than the preaching of the 
Reformers. It tried not to convince men of doctrines so 
much as to convert their souls, not to reform their opinions 
so much as to educate them for life eternal. Luther and his 
friends gave themselves to the emancipation of the human 
mind from the trammels of worldly subtlety and error, 
Loyola and his brethren labored to subjugate the human 
heart to the simple rules of the Christian life. Luther 
spoke to men as Jesus to the Samaritan woman about the 
true spiritual worship, or to Nicodemus, of the new birth 
in faith. Loyola urged upon them the answer of Jesus 
to the young ruler and showed them the way of salvation. 
On the two great commandments of love to God and one's 
neighbor hung all his law and prophecy. Luther was 
zealous in propagating his truth, but his zeal was the zeal 
of controversy \ he would send out his opinions to men 
because they were new, fresh, and antagonistic. Loyola 
was a propagandist of the most ancient faith. He had no 
controversy but with worldly souls sin-blinded and corrupt. 
He sent his disciples to preach the word of reconciliation, 
"good tidings of great joy." 

The great doctrine of the Reformation was Justification 
by Faith. Whoso could comprehend this, might find the 
grace of God. Whoso heartily believed this was not far 
from the kingdom of heaven. The great precept of the 
Society of Jesus was the duty of penitence. Whoso could 
feel this, might enter into the new life of the spirit. Whoso 
was filled by this feeling was already crowned with the 
glory of life eternal. Luther explained that process by 
which man, nothing in himself, becomes everything in the 
strength of Christ. Ignatius enforced that necessity by 



LOYOLA. 319 



which the sinner must see that Christ makes him strong 
only through his own weakness. The first showed man 
the avenue to redemption through a free and searching 
love of truth, the second showed man the way to holiness 
in a deep self-abasement and submission. The one en- 
couraged the feeling among brethren of personal liberty, 
no man might control the faith or worship of his brother. 
The other enjoined the constant sense among brethren of 
dependence on each other and all together on God, no 
man might cherish a creed or use a ritual but such as God 
had given in his Church. The German reformer told men 
of their rights, reminded them of their manhood. His 
rival in the new society told men of their needs, reminded 
them that they were all children of the Church and the 
Saviour. The influence of the Reform could train the 
poor scholar that he should be a champion of the Bible in 
the halls of debate and the courts of princes, that he 
should die a martyr to his unbending creed. The Jesuit 
theory could subdue the pride of birth, and take from the 
very palaces of kings those who should carry the practical 
Gospel, the name and life of Jesus, into the homes of the 
lowly, and live a long life of martyrdom that the poor 
heathen might find Christ's full salvation. Luther taught 
that the truth of God is the ohject of the life of man, that 
there is no higher work than to find and defend this truth. 
But Loyola declared that the highest work of man is to 
love God and serve him ; that so his truth is revealed 
without man's seeking. The spirits which came to Luther 
were demons of the intellect, disturbing his reason, and 
vexing the balance of his mind. He drove them away 
with his inkstand and his copy of the Epistles. The 
spirits which came to the Catholic Saint were angels of the 
affectio?is, sweet messengers of God, beckoning him up to 
join with the heavenly hosts. He heard their voices, he 
saw their light when he knelt before the crucifix, and read 
the words of the Saviour of men. Both prized the office 
of prayer. Both used it habitually, spending nights and 
days in its earnest pleading. Both enjoined it as the 
chief of duties upon their disciples. But with the Span- 
iard prayer was to humble the spirit to a sense of its own 
poverty, till it should welcome the aid of the heavenly 



32Q LOYOLA. 



powers, while with the Saxon it was to fortify the soul that 
it might stand alone and fight with the powers of evil. 
Both were fond of the imagery of warfare and wrote much 
about the Church militant. But the one showed how the 
officers might best lead their hosts to victory, while the 
other showed how the ranks of the armies should bear 
themselves under the great leadership of Christ. 

There is strong temptation to carry this parallel farther, 
but I dare not try any longer your patience. Perhaps 
enough has been already said, even if loosely and imper- 
fectly, to give you an idea of Ignatius and his system. I 
had hoped to add some sketches of the chief of his com- 
panions and successors ; of Francis Xavier, the most 
wonderful of all Christian missionaries, whose journeys 
in the service of his Master reached to three times the 
circuit of the globe, whose knightly graces, and large 
culture, and sweet affections were all consecrated to the 
Gospel work, with a quite miraculous constancy, to whom 
God gave as with a continual Pentecost the gift of tongues, 
so that China and Japan, and the Isles of the sea could 
hear from his lips while he was still a stranger on their 
shores, the word of God in their native speech, in whose 
labors fact outruns even Catholic fancy, and whose seven 
hundred thousand converts need no embellishment of 
angels to complete the sublimity of the picture of his life ; 
of James Laynes, the second general of the order, whose 
rare acumen, whose vast learning, whose mastery of all 
the arts of the sophist and the debater enabled him to 
reduce to a technical system the great, designs of the 
founder of the fraternity and to control the creed of the 
Church for all future time by his presence and eloquence 
in the Council of Trent, an overmatch there for legates 
and Cardinals; and of Francis Borgia, the third general 
of the order, who brought the pride of royal descent, the 
accomplishments of chivalry, the patrimonies of princely 
estates, the memories of love, and the experience of glory, 
all as an offering to this new crusade; who, whether as 
husband or courtier, as priest or warrior, in the discipline 
of the cell, or in argument with an emperor, alike aston- 
ished and charmed all who listened to his eloquence or 
beheld his fervor, who organized the schools of Jesus, so 



LOYOLA. 32T 



that the thought of Loyola was made clear to the infant 
mind of all Catholic lands ; of all these I had hoped to 
give at least the characteristic outline ; to say something 
also of the progress of the order and its influence upon 
the civilization of the world, to show how its purity of 
purpose had been frustrated by the vice of its principle, 
how it had come to be everywhere the manager of intrigue 
and the ally of despotism, the servile tool of arbitrary 
kings and arrogant popes, how the manlier virtues have 
faded always beneath its shadow, and the symmetry of 
Christian character has been blighted by its touch, how it 
lias hindered everywhere the progress of thought, and 
separated art and science fatally from the affairs of re- 
ligion, how adopting deceitfully the manners and dress of 
the world, it has infected the world with the subtle poison 
of its false morality, till the name Jesuit has come to de- 
scribe one who can compromise all truth, and excuse the 
violation of all faith, and teach men a Gospel never taught 
by the Redeemer. 

Loyola saw in his life-time the beginning of his vision 
revealed ; twelve provinces, a hundred colleges, and a 
mission reaching over two hemispheres, were reckoned on 
his register before he was called away. He saw its zeal, 
its vitality, its sure success. Had he prophecy also of its 
departures from the precepts of Jesus ? Could he see 
that the time would come when it should be expelled from 
Catholic kingdoms and even the holy Pontiff should con- 
sent to its suppression, when its cunning should be the 
fear, and its crimes the shame, even of the city of its na- 
tivity, when the brethren of the Jesuits should share the 
stigma of the Jews and be hunted from land to land along 
with the hated race of Abraham? No such vision dis- 
turbed the last hours of the life of Ignatius. His life of 
labor closed so peacefully that few knew when he died. 
True to his principle of humility, to the last he would 
make no complaint and ask no relief. He wanted no re- 
nown of a saintly departure, and though he felt his strength 
decaying, and heard the summons of the death-angel, he 
called no brethren to his death-bed, and sought no friendly 
hand to smooth his pillow. He gave no orders about his 
funeral, named no successor, but died like a common man. 

21 



322 LOYOLA. 



His body rests in the Chapel of the Casa Professa at 
Rome. There is a silver shrine beneath the altar, his 
bones are daily shown to the faithful, and before that 
shrine, blazing with gold and jewels, adorned with the 
statue of the saint, the knees of countless myriads, pray- 
ing there for his powerful intercession, have worn away the 
marble pavement. 



ST. CHARLES BOBBOMEO. 323 



XIII. 
ST. CHARLES BORROMEO. 

A prominent divine of one of our cities who now graces 
in his own person the Episcopal chair, happened in an 
after-dinner speech to let fall the incautious remark that 
there could be " no Church without a bishop." And 
speedily a controversy arose in the reKgious and secular 
prints which for three months alternately amused and 
amazed those not wonted to the style of ecclesiastic war- 
fare. The controversy was silenced only when it passed 
from an abstract to a practical question, when it began to 
bear upon sensitive points, and to suggest uncomfortable 
but undeniable facts of contemporary religious history, 
when it slid into the thesis that there can be no living 
Christian Church where the bishop is not a decent, vir- 
tuous, and pious man. This would have been a delicate 
theme to argue, and the public debate was adjourned by 
mutual consent. And this lies beneath all discussion 
about the rights of spiritual lordship. One unworthy to 
rule will hardly sustain his claim by the show of his 
Episcopal lineage or by the pretence of a transmitted 
sanctity by the laying on of prelatical hands. But to the 
true apostle, to the overseer of the Church who joins the 
zeal of Peter to the love of John, earnest believers always 
submit and defer, whether or not he claim the authority of 
an anointed bishop. His right enters not into controversy. 
His yoke the Church is glad to wear, and only by such as 
he and not by any arrogance of Church assumption will 
the ancient theory be upheld of the need of the bishop's 
office. 

The theory is that the bishop is at once the wisest, 
purest, and holiest of pastors, chosen among the rest for 
his superior ability and superior sanctity, to rule not only, 
but to guide by word and by character the Churches of 



324 ST. CHARLES BORROMEO. 

t — 

his charge. And this theory is still maintained even in 
our own land in defiance of the verdict of more than one 
Diocesan Council. It is not even here necessary that a 
bishop should be honest, temperate, or pure, to retain his 
rank and title. But in the age of the Reformation, there 
was no theory of piety or virtue as essential to the sacred 
office. A bishop was not expected to be holier than other 
men of his rank and birth. There was no reserve asked 
of him of any pleasure, or any taste. He might live as 
he chose, he might feast like a Sybarite, spend like a 
prince, or swear like a pirate, wear the dress of a courtier, 
or hoard the revenues of a banker. He was not required, 
often not expected, to dwell in his diocese, or to know by 
name his subordinate priests. And the Council of Trent 
could not be forced to make residence obligatory, though 
urged to do so by more than one royal demand. Nay, 
even the preliminary of ordination was not essential, and 
it happened sometimes that the archbishop of the richest 
sees was not a priest or a deacon, or a monk, and had no 
consecrating power. As in Thibet, the grand Lama is 
frequently a child of tender years, so Europe in the six- 
teenth century was compelled to recognize in beardless 
youths the lawful overseer of great Christian provinces. 
Promotion to Episcopal station came not from the free 
choice of presbyters and laymen, but from the Pope's 
nomination, and every new occupant of St. Peter's chair 
was expected to enrich his family with the goods and 
honors of all vacant sacred offices. The one apostolic in- 
junction that the chief bishop of the Church regarded, was 
to take good care of his own household. 

In no department was reform in the Church more need- 
ful than in its ecclesiastic life. The Christian world 
craved more examples of practical holiness than new evi- 
dences of soundness in faith, earnestness of zeal, or con- 
stancy in prayer. Men asked for a bishop who should 
truly instance to them the proper spirit of his office ; who 
should restore the almost forgotten Apostolic type of 
clerical life ; who should show how the sacred character 
might dignify the sacred office, and how real worth might 
wear the honors of the Church. They wanted the spec- 
tacle of a consistent and manly Christian life, in which 



ST. CHARLES BOEUOMEO. 3 2 5 

there should be no eccentricity, no blaze of novelty, but 
only the use and practice of common duties. Ignatius 
was indeed a saint, but he was the austere founder of a 
mysterious brotherhood, and came not in contact with the 
multiplied duties and relations of men. Theresa, too, was 
holy among women, but her holiness was of the cloister, 
and a Spanish nun could not show priests what to do, 
though she might teach them how to pray. In the solemn 
decrees of Trent, the faithful might rejoice that the Rock 
foundations of religious truth were laid again. What they 
waited for now was for priests of unstained robe and celes- 
tial bearing, to break to them at the new altar the bread 
of life, for a tread and voice along the choir that should 
consecrate again the renewed house. And the "signal in- 
stance of this was given when Charles Borromeo wore the 
cardinal's purple, and filled the pastor's office. 

It is a pleasant task to review a life so beautiful, to de- 
scribe character so almost faultless as that of this eminent 
Saint. Rare in Christian history is a spiritual temper so 
finely balanced, a practical wisdom so chastened by piety 
and love. No word of detraction has been uttered con- 
cerning him either by Protestant prejudice or Catholic 
envy. With singular consent, the extremest zealots of 
party stop to praise this good man who belonged to no 
party but that of Christ. He illustrates for us in a more 
familiar way than Loyola's society the union of a life of 
labor and prayer. He offers a more graceful sacrifice of 
noble birth and knightly tastes to the duties of the pastoral 
office than the regal Borgia, changing the hopes of a Span- 
ish throne for the deep humiliation of a Jesuit's vows. 
His is one of the few ecclesiastical lives which even in 
this nineteenth age are fit to be taken as models of duty, 
of devotion, of true efficiency. If Luther had delayed 
for a score of years his sojourn in Milan, he would have 
wept, not tears of bitterness but tears of joy, at the feet 
of this disciple of Christ. If such as he had gone legate 
into the Saxon land, no subtlety of Wittemberg monks, 
and no schemes of ambitious princes could have matched 
the persuasion of his sanctity. If his advice had been 
followed in the quarrel with Henry of England, that strong 
outpost of faith would not have been broken from the 



326 ST. CHARLES B011R0ME0. 



Holy See. and the first power of the world might uphold 
a universal, in place of a merely national Church. If he 
had made that pastoral journey through the valleys of 
Switzerland a few years earlier, Calvin had not then be- 
come the spiritual tyrant of Geneva, and no Puritan 
exodus had secured to freedom and faith the shores of an 
unknown continent. 

The impulse has been warm within me as I have studied 
the life of Charles Borromeo, to translate those two an- 
tique volumes in which Godeau, Bishop of Venice, has 
recorded so eloquently what the Saint was and what he 
did. And it is hard to limit to the hour of a single lecture 
the just survey of so lovely a life. I cannot, at any rate, 
dwell upon those early forming influences in which the 
biographers of great and holy men delight to show the 
prophecy of the future of their heroes • or show here what 
hereditary graces may have come to St. Charles through 
the counts of Avona, of whom his father bore the insignia, 
or through the great race of the Medicis, of which his 
mother was a daughter. It is enough to say that both 
these parents were better than their lineage, that Count 
Gilbert Borromeo could set before his son the example of 
a ruler so faithful that the Emperor Charles V multiplied 
his trusts, so prayerful that his knees became hardened by 
much kneeling in the little chapel which he had built, so 
compassionate that the orphans of his tenants all called 
him their father, and so constant in almsgiving that he 
never ate a meal till the poor had received some charity 
from his hand, that none named the mother but to praise 
her for that sweet domestic fidelity which forgot the pride 
of descent in her single care that the sons and daughters 
of her house should grow up to serve Christ in his Church. 
In the castle of Avona the religion was of practice and 
not of profession merely, and as the family sat at evening 
before that loveliest of Italian landscapes, looking out 
upon the still waves of the Lago Maggiore, and the rich 
foliage of their beautiful island, and sang there the Hymn 
to the Virgin, Nature might join with parental lessons to 
teach the rudiments of the religious life. 

In this castle of Avona, on the second of October, 1538, 
the second son of Count Gilbert Borromeo was born. It 



ST. CHARLES BORROMEO. 3 2 7 

was the feast-day of the Holy Angel Guardians, when 
Catholics are wont to call to mind that sentence of the 
Scriptures, "he shall give his angels charge concerning 
thee." The omen of his birth seemed to be fulfilled from 
the first in the tastes and tendencies of the growing child. 
He loved the works which angels might choose. He was 
destined from the cradle to service in the Church. His 
passion for the holy offices, and his progress in religious 
studies outstripped the diligence of his father's instruc- 
tion. The boy soon exhausted the literary privileges of 
his home. But more remarkable than his progress in 
learning was his readiness in alms-giving. He became 
the steward of the household to the poor, and administered 
the surplus revenues of the estate in a manner at once 
generous and impartial. In the University of Pavia, 
where he went at an early age to complete his education, 
he was marked at once as a model youth, not in eloquence, 
for he was slow of speech, not in physical grace, for his 
form did not fit him for athletic amusement, not merely 
for scholarship, for there were some who read more deeply 
in ancient lore, and divided more skilfully the subtleties 
of the civil and canon law ; but in character, in meekness, 
self-denial, firmness against temptation, strict regard for 
truth, for disinterestedness, and fervent piety, he took at 
once the highest place. All haunts of vice he avoided as 
the pestilence ; and it was said of him in Pavia, as once 
of Gregory and Basil in Athens, that he knew but two 
streets in the city, one leading to the school and the other 
to the church. He chose for his companions the men of 
noted religious principles, and taught them by his example 
as no precept could teach them, the beauty of holiness. 

In 1558, when he was twenty years old, the death of his 
father called him home to Milan. It would be pleasant to 
relate the manner in which he discharged the trust of 
settling the estates of his family, and baffled the schemes 
of selfish agents who sought to draw him into dishonesty 
and profligacy ; and how he disposed of the large revenues 
of two abbeys which his uncles on either side had given 
him. But these trusts were speedily eclipsed by far higher 
dignity and promotion. Hardly had he taken his doctor's 
degree at Pavia, when John of Medicis, his mother's 



328 ST. CHARLES BORROMEO. 

brother, was chosen to the Papal chair, and sent for him 
to come to Rome. A Pope's nephews were in that age in 
the way of highest honor, and it was not deemed strange 
that Charles Borromeo was created cardinal and sat as the 
Archbishop of his native province, though he had not com- 
pleted his twenty-second year. Youth seemed no objection 
in one so worthy. Various offices of trust and emolu- 
ment were pressed upon him, which he refused. It was 
rare that any one had declined to be Grand Chamberlain, 
the second office in Rome, and if Borromeo accepted the 
charge of grand penitentiary, it was for the chance it gave 
him to guide the discipline of the Church and reform its 
morals. He was placed at the head of the council, with 
power to sign all decrees in the name of his uncle, and in 
fact made the virtual ruler of the- Papal State. If he did 
not govern the church absolutely during the Pontificate of 
his uncle, it was because his wise counsels were sometimes 
overruled by the more worldly plans of his associates in 
the sacred body. 

It was a hard position for one so young to occupy, re- 
quiring a weight of wisdom, and a measure of discretion, 
far beyond the years of one fresh from college life. Yet 
the duties of the place were discharged in such wise that 
all fears were disarmed ; and even disappointed rivals vied 
in their praise. Accessible to all classes of citizens he 
had good words for those who needed advice and sufficient 
gifts for those who needed aid. He discouraged beggary 
by removing the tax on food and making bread plentiful 
and cheap. He took care to forestall complaints by re- 
moving their causes. Insensible to flattery from others, 
he loved to see the smile of gratitude on the faces of 
those whose wants he relieved, and whose wrongs he re- 
dressed. He thought it fit to keep up the state of a bishop 
and a prince ; and none who went to his sumptuous feasts 
and enjoyed his royal hospitality, could complain that he 
degraded his rank or was mean in his style of life. Yet 
there was no sign of personal indulgence. The seductions 
of pleasure could not corrupt a heart early filled with the 
love of God. To set aside all chance of luxury, the Car- 
dinal became a man of labor, wrote with his own hand the 
dispatches of his office and the decisions of his courts, 



ST. CHARLES BORROMEO. 3 2 9 

divided his time by method, took hours for study, and 
hours for prayer, and showed to the dissolute cardinals 
around him how it was possible to be at once a magistrate, 
a scholar, and a saint without losing the society of the 
world or courting any cloistral seclusion. His palace be- 
came an academy of letters and the fine arts, and his 
domestics were the companions of his exercises of elo- 
quence, poetry and song. Rich were the delights of those 
attic, or as he called them, Vatican nights, when after 
the fatigue of the clay's complex affairs, the wits and doctors 
of Rome met in the library of the young Cardinal to hear 
him read from Epictetus, or recite the sublime passages of 
Cicero about the nature of the gods and the dignity of 
old age, and compare the style and spirit of Pagan phil- 
osophy with Christian doctrines and duties. Many a 
future dignitary of the Church learned there how to sepa- 
rate the wheat from the chaff in the writings of classic 
ages, and what portions might be turned to Christian uses. 
And in that academy was taught the philosophy of life, 
which would temperately use its good things for the service 
of God and not spurn beauty for the sake of sanctity. 

It was a splendid and honorable life to lead, every taste 
met, every want gratified, power enough to satisfy ambi- 
tion, wealth enough to prevent the greed of gain, a youth 
beginning where age rarely ends. Yet Borromeo was not 
quite contented. He was a cardinal, but he was also a 
bishop, and it seemed to him wrong that a bishop should 
dwell separate from the homes of his people. He knew 
what corruptions abounded in the churches of his charge. 
He knew under what oppressions the people were groan- 
ing, and it seemed to him wrong to be living in luxury at 
Rome while in his native province abuses were unchecked 
and the Christian rites were profaned by their ministers. 
True, he had power as Papal legate to exercise discipline 
over a much wider dominion. Not the States of the 
Church alone, but Portugal, Holland, and Switzerland 
were made subject to his command in religious things. 
But the empty possession of power could not satisfy him. 
He longed to be not the head of a court merely, or the 
centre of a brilliant circle but the true pastor of a flock, 
the shepherd and bishop of souls. The death of his elder 



33° ST. CHARLES BOEROMEO. 

brother Frederic, which occurred in 1562, increased this 
desire. His heart now was divided between duty to his 
aged uncle and longing to dwell with his kindred and 
countrymen. The great enterprises which he ruled from 
Rome could not still this secret longing. Now happily 
through his management, the protracted labors of the 
Council of Trent had been brought to their close. Colleges 
had been founded, and legates sent out to enforce the 
sacred decrees. And the cardinal determined that if 
he could not dwell with his people, he would at least go 
and see them. Before his going, however, he prepared 
himself by ordination to fulfill the duties of the priest- 
hood. For until now he had been a ruler of the Church 
without the right even of an humble minister. This was 
not a step quite agreeable to his friends. The honor of a 
knightly house seemed to rest upon him, and even Pius 
IV, whose pride of descent was at least equal to his zeal 
for the faith, pressed his nephew to resign his religious 
offices, to marry, and maintain as a secular noble the 
dignity of the race of Medicis. In the face of all remon- 
strances, however, Charles bound himself to the altar by a 
solemn vow, and henceforth began to curtail the splendor 
of his life, and adopt the simpler style becoming to a 
priest. He was willing to descend in spiritual dignity. 
There are few instances on record of cardinals stooping 
to the office of the priesthood, fewer even than of 
monarchs abdicating thrones. And by this act of humilia- 
tion, Borromeo tacitly rebuked the unjust and irregular 
manner of his appointment. 

On the first of September, 1565, with a retinue of the 
most eminent and skillful men of the Church, the Cardinal 
set out on his visit to his native city. The fame of his 
coming had gone before him, and all along the way the 
monks, the nobles and the populace came together to wel- 
come one who bore not only the high authority of a Papal 
Nuncio, but brought with him such precocious sanctity. 
On Sunday, the twenty-third, he entered Milan, amid ac- 
clamations and blessings, beneath triumphal arches and 
windows garlanded and public buildings hung with sacred 
emblems. The patron saint of that ancient city seemed 
now restored to their prayers and the people shouted that 



ST. CHARLES BORROMEO. 331 



Ambrose was risen again in Milan. The most aged could 
hardly remember when their bishop had been seen in the 
streets, and the long interval of eighty years seemed 
hardly longer than the one thousand which had passed 
since the great Archbishop died. The enthusiasm rose to 
its height when the young Archbishop ascended the cathe- 
dral pulpit and took for his text the words, "with a great 
desire have I desired to eat this passover with you." The 
sermon was not eloquent by the rules of the school, but it 
had an appeal to the hearts of the hearers such as no 
brilliant discourse could make. It was their bishop preach- 
ing to them. It was the great Roman Cardinal, virtual 
ruler of three kingdoms and heir apparent not only to a 
temporal sovereignty, but to the lordship of the Christian 
world, who was preaching to them as their pastor. Can 
we wonder that the simple words seemed dictated by a 
special inspiration and that he whom men pitied in the 
Church of St. Maria Maggiore at Rome for his timid and 
halting speech, seemed a very Apostle in the Cathedral of 
Milan. 

We next find the young prelate presiding in a provincial 
council of his diocese over a most dignified assembly of 
cardinals and bishops, and astonishing all by his majestic 
presence, his prudence, his comprehensive grasp of the great 
matters of discipline and the singleness of his zeal for the 
interests of religion. Scarcely is this over when he is attend- 
ing with all the grace of a courtier, the two sisters of the 
Emperor on their journey through Italy. Then we see him 
in Rome in the chamber where his uncle is dying, praying 
there that strength may be given to the aged servant of 
God to meet the common trial of all the children of men. 
Holding the cross above the sufferer, "Most Holy Father," 
said he, "all your desires and thoughts ought to be turned 
towards heaven. Behold Christ crucified, the only foun- 
dation for our hope, our mediator and advocate, the 
victim and sacrifice for our sins. He is all goodness, all 
patience; his mercy is moved by the tears of sinners, and 
he never refuses pardon to those who humbly ask it." 
"One more favor I ask," said he, "in addition to the 
many that you have showed me, greater than all the rest. 
It is that you will lay aside all thoughts now of the world 



332 ST. CHARLES B0RR02IE0. 

and your office, and turn your mind wholly upon the great 
theme of your own salvation and prepare your soul for 
your last passage." Many days he waited at the bedside, 
speaking words of cheer and counsel, reading from the 
sacred volume, administering the last sacraments of the 
Church, and rejoicing in that Christian death of the Head 
of the Church where the last words were those of aged 
Simeon, " Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in 
peace." 

From the death chamber of one Pope the scene changes 
to the mysterious conclave where another is to be chosen. 
And there we behold him who had just closed the eyes of 
a beloved uncle, supporting for the vacant station the 
hereditary enemy of his house and race, sacrificing all 
personal affection, all family feeling, all pride and ambi- 
tion to his single sense of the need and the good of the 
Church, overruling the schemes of princes, and baffling 
the intrigues of interested men, that Christendom might 
have the ablest ruler. Gladly would Pius V have kept at 
his court one on whose wisdom he might so well rely, but 
the bishop remembered his flock, and hardly a year had 
passed since his visit to them before he went to dwell 
among them. It was a reforming work which he went first 
to do, a work which, beginning in the purification of his 
own soul, should extend in widening circle till it should 
reach the whole bound of his dominion. 

The work commenced with himself. Self-denial, absti- 
nence, were virtues which he would teach. They were 
virtues which he began to practise in a novel way. He 
knew well how to labor. He learned now how to fast. 
Bread and water with a few herbs, chestnuts or apples, on 
the feast-days of the Church, became the rule of his diet. 
One meal in a day was the limit of his indulgence. In 
Lent, dried figs supplied the place of the customary bread, 
and in Holy Week, by bitter peas, he commemorated the 
mockery of the Saviour. Friends remonstrated with him 
for this strange temperance, and predicted that his life 
would be shortened by it. But the Cardinal answered 
that he did it if not for his own health, at least for the 
health of his Church, and if his own life were shortened 
by it others might be saved from more hurtful luxury. 



ST. CHARLES BORROMEO. 333 

It became a proverb to call long abstinence "Cardinal 
Borromeo's remedy." He curtailed the hours of sleep 
and was wont to ask "if generals could in their warfare 
content themselves with the short rest which they might 
take sitting, should not a bishop engaged in warfare with 
Satan and his hosts, do at least as much ? " He inured 
his body to privations and hardships of every kind, not 
like some ascetics that he might mortify the flesh, but 
rather that he might discipline his frame for the trials and 
exposures of his station. His private expenditures were 
all retrenched and only enough was reserved from charity 
to meet the bare necessities of food and raiment and the 
decencies of hospitality. He would not even have a 
garden to his house, much less an episcopal palace. "The 
garden of a bishop," said he, "is the Holy Scripture and 
his proper palace is an eternal house in heaven." Even 
the ornaments of his ducal house were put out of sight, 
all the fine paintings, marbles, trophies, suits of armor, 
and blazonry. He wanted everything to remind him not 
that he was Count of Avona or heir of the Medicis, but 
that he was bishop of Milan. His own coarse robe of 
black was always worn under his priestly vestures. It was 
so coarse they say once a beggar refused to accept it in 
charity. Even the art which was the passion of his youth 
was half-forbidden, and he restricted himself to the music 
of the hymns of the Church. He became his own ser- 
vant, employing his dependants only in those duties which 
were for the service of others or of the Church, and doing 
for himself all, even the most menial, duties. 

The reform which he began with himself, where it 
seemed hardly needed, he continued in his household, 
where it was more important. He knew that the best evi- 
dence of fitness to govern abroad is good discipline at 
home. His domestics were men fit, if occasion called 
them, to be teachers and priests. They had constant em- 
ployment, some in copying manuscripts, some in visiting 
the sick, some in helping the poor. None could hope for 
any Church preferment or any favor because they were ser- 
vants of so high a Master. The only offices which any 
might hold were offices of duty within the house. There 
was the chief steward, and the chief spiritual prefect, chain- 



334 ST. CHARLES BOBBOMEO. 

berlains to watch his actions, and censors to reprove his 
faults, priests to hear his confessions, and deacons to read 
to him spiritual books. The dress of all was to be modest, 
without embroideries, showy colors, jewelry, or any mere 
secular ornament. They were allowed to bear no arms, 
to have no private instruments of music, and were ex- 
pected to fill up their intervals of leisure with religious 
reading and conversation. The Cardinal made it a point 
to know every one by name, the mind and heart of every 
one. Often they were surprised in the evening by his soft 
step entering their chambers, and when any were sick he 
was there to administer help both to body and soul. In 
all religious offices daily prayer, confession, mass, the ob- 
servance of holy days, feast times and fast times, each, 
from the humblest to the highest, must be regular and 
punctual. The poor and the rich, the worldly and the 
pious, were forced to see and ready to confess that if any- 
where the sentence of Paul of a " church within the 
house " were realized in life it was in the religious house 
of the Cardinal Borromeo. 

From his own household he proceeded to seek out and 
reform those households where Catholic faith by profession 
was the principal treasure, to inspect the numerous par- 
ishes, monasteries and nunneries in the province of his 
religious rule. No village where was a church, a convent 
or a school was left unvisited. The hamlet curate was 
not too mean for the archbishop to question concerning 
his system, nor was any congregation of monks so in- 
trenched in proscriptive lawlessness that he hesitated to 
bring them to an even rule of discipline. Into the wildest 
and most secluded parishes he penetrated, where the light 
of a bishop's countenance was quite unknown, journeying 
on foot at hours when Italian bishops were wont to sleep. 
He made however no visit without declaring his intention 
to the suffragan bishop, wishing them to show respect to 
the right even of inferiors. When he reached a village, 
his custom was to go directly to the Church without change 
of raiment, without refreshment, and speak from the pulpit 
the words of his errand. His acquaintance with the 
people began always at the altar. He would lead their 
prayers before he relieved their wants or rebuked their 



ST. CHARLES B01UIOMEO. 335 

sins. He was always the guest of the curate of the par- 
ish, refusing all temptation to lodge with the rich or noble, 
and avoiding the occasion of any scandal. Where the 
curates were poor he carried his own provisions with him. 
His observing eye detected at once the wants and the de- 
fects of the sanctuary and the pastor's house. It seemed 
to him a personal charge that no church in his spiritual 
dominion should hinder through any lack or abuse the 
decent worship of God. He examined every altar, every 
ceiling, every pavement, the baptismal font, the adjoining 
chapels, the robing rooms of the priests, the doors and the 
windows, that nothing should anywhere be found out of 
place, broken or decayed, that no sign of carelessness 
should be left. 

Painful and tedious were the long journeyings which 
the cardinal was forced to take in these parochial visits. 
But they were pleasant to him, as showing what force of 
faith still remained in the humbler ranks of the people, 
and bringing him into nearer acquaintance with the various 
details of human life. Generally his visits were welcomed. 
When he came, the honor of such a presence surprised 
them ; while he staid, the beauty of such a spirit capti- 
vated more and more. With the convents his task of 
reform was not so agreeable or easy. Long impunity had 
made the monks of some orders bold in their profligacy. 
Discipline with them had relaxed as treasures multiplied. 
The pretence of sanctity with many was discarded, and in 
numerous instances the whole force of a single convent 
was limited to a provost, who, with his servants, lived like 
a prince upon the wealth which the piety of former ages 
had gathered there. Especially was this case with the 
order of the Humiliati which, founded some four hundred 
vears before, had now ninety monasteries with only one 
hundred and seventy monks in all. In dealing with these 
convents the cardinal found that ready acquiescence was 
not to be expected. At every point, his decrees were re- 
sisted. They laughed at his pietistic canons. They 
defied his commands. They barred their doors against 
his entrance. They appealed to the Pope against his in- 
vasion of their rights. Their gold was freely used to 
corrupt his officers. All that slander could invent or 



33 6 ST. CHARLES BOB ROMEO. 

malice distort concerning his character and life was freely- 
circulated. When his decrees were published, some of the 
friars ran to the bells and sought to create a riot in the 
city. Finding all their measures in vain, and learning that 
with the full authority of the Pope the reform in their 
convents would go on, the profligate would be expelled, 
and the houses would be filled only with men of decent 
life and living piety, they determined as a last resort to 
assassinate this contumacious prelate. Already the car- 
dinal had been exposed to an attempt of this kind in his 
controversy with the canons of the Collegiate Church of 
La Scala, where the cross which he carried was shot at in 
the very door of the Church. The issue of this outrage 
had been that the lives of the offenders had been spared 
only through the clemency and prayers of the Cardinal, in 
whose heart no temper of revenge seems ever to have 
found place. But the scheme of the monks was still more 
daring. Money hired even a priest to murder at the altar 
the bishop who prayed there for his enemies. As the holy 
father was on his knees in the chapel at the hour of even- 
ing devotions with his household around him, and the 
choir chanting those words of Jesus, " Let not your heart 
be troubled, neither let it be afraid," the sound of a blun- 
derbuss rang through the chapel, the music ceased and the 
service was likely to end in consternation. In the con- 
fusion the assassin fled. But the cardinal commanded 
them to resume their kneeling, to continue their prayers, 
and the service was finished in the usual manner. Exami- 
nation then revealed a marvellous escape. The robe and 
cassock of the Cardinal were pierced with shot, the table 
hard by was penetrated deeply in several places, and the 
ball was found at his feet, having struck the socket in the 
middle of the back and fallen down without entering the 
body, leaving only a slight bruise upon the surface of the 
bone. The people called it a two-fold miracle, a miracle 
that Providence should so preserve the life of their bishop, 
and an equal miracle that he so calmly should meet and 
suffer the outrage. The whole city was aroused at once 
to gratitude and vengeance. The murderers were quickly 
discovered and all the entreaties of the good cardinal 
could not hinder their execution. The order of the Hu- 



ST. CHARLES BOBBOMEO. 337 

miliati was forever abolished and the revenues which ages 
had accumulated given back to the poor from whom they 
came in the beginning. The result of this daring crime 
was a warning to the other monastic orders ; and he found 
no more resistance in his efforts to restore the discipline 
and purity of convent life. More than one religious order 
consented to recognize him as their spiritual father, and 
offered themselves to serve him in any way that might be 
for the salvation of souls. He had a harder task to sub- 
ject the nuns to his rules. The self-willed sisterhood were 
not so ready to accept a system which required them to 
labor as well as pray, and his exceeding modesty forbade 
him to press his suit by the same arguments which he 
used with the other sex. But patience prevailed at last, 
and the fair recluses joined with the rest of the city in 
praising the wisdom and virtue of the ruler whom God 
had sent them. 

Next to the convents came the seminaries of teaching, 
from the great Cathedral chapter down to the parish 
schools. The cardinal was not content with a mere ritual 
service to illustrate the influence of the metropolitan 
Church. It was grand on the holy days, indeed, to show 
the crowds the gorgeous spectacle of the mass in that 
Cathedral which stood then, as it stands now, one of the 
wonders of the world ; and he had too much filial piety to 
diminish the splendor of a church where the generations 
of his knightly ancestors had brought their gifts and 
offered their prayers. The magnificence of worship did 
not fall off there under his direction. But he left the 
choir of that stupendous edifice a marvel of wealth as 
well as of beauty. The service of no Roman Cathedral 
could vie with the mass as Borromeo appointed it in the 
Church of Milan. 

His idea of a metropolitan church however was that it 
should be a centre of light and truth as well as of splendor. 
He appointed for it a three-fold system of instruction. 
Twice in the week were lectures in divinity to be read 
there and every Sunday a sermon was preached. This 
service was entrusted to a distinguished theologian. Then 
there was a penitentiary appointed, whose business it was 
to hear confessions from all parts of the diocese, to decide 
22 



338 ST. CHARLES BOH ROMEO. 

cases of discipline and answer questions concerning the 
duties of priests and curates. A third office was given to 
a Doctor of Laws, who was to instruct young clergymen 
in the canons of the Church. Around this centre in the 
plan of the Cardinal were grouped the colleges of theology 
and law, the seminaries of rudimental religion, and finally 
the parish schools. The number of these schools which 
he founded is almost incredible ; seven hundred and forty, 
with three thousand and forty teachers, and forty thousand 
and ninety-eight scholars are recorded. Beside these 
every parish priest was required to teach the children of 
his flock, and for failure in that duty was liable to forfeit 
his office. In no part of his Episcopal work was St. 
Charles more careful than in this training of the young. 
He believed that the Church had a right to all children, 
and that all children, whether in lowly or noble station, 
had a claim upon it for Christian knowledge. It was a 
heavy sin upon his heart that any child should grow up 
through his neglect in ignorance of the truth of God. 

Next to reform in education came reform in criminal 
discipline. In spite of the opposition of the magistrates the 
cardinal insisted upon a new administration of the prisons 
by which punishment should not be indiscriminate or wan- 
ton, but should be proportioned to the offence and the ob- 
stinacy of the convicted felon. He took care that no of- 
fender should die without the prayers and consolations of 
the Christian Gospel. He sought pardon for all who seemed 
truly penitent. He established an order of visitors, who 
should bring to every cell daily invitations from the Sa- 
viour, and went himself often in person to see the des- 
perate and hardened that others dared not visit. He 
would have criminals treated not as wild beasts, but as 
human beings, erring and guilty indeed, but still as capable 
of salvation and not alien from the love of God. And he 
sought to prevent crime by drying up its sources. He 
would gather into hospitals the classes of the abandoned 
that they might be saved from a worse destiny before it 
was too late. And great numbers of those whom society 
had first destroyed and then deserted blessed in him their 
gracious rescuer from infamous death. He had his re- 
ligious police to watch and check the beginnings of crime, 



ST. CHARLES BORROMEO. 339 

and to bring all who were tempted into the circle of Chris- 
tian influence. And so striking was the change that his 
twenty years of service wrought in Milan and its neighbor- 
hood that from the most turbulent, profligate, ill-governed 
and pauperised city in Europe, it became proverbial for 
neatness, safety and tranquillity. Even the magistracy, his 
foe at every step, thwarting, hating and threatening him, 
denouncing his interference as insolent and his schemes 
as ridiculous, was changed through his agency to the most 
admirable of municipal bodies. 

And never had the poor a more diligent and untiring 
friend. No sufferer came in vain to the Cardinal's door. 
In the byways of the city his messengers sought out the 
distressed, and from the highways and hedges they came 
in to the royal feast. Of him men repeated the parable 
of Job: "When the ear heard, then it blessed me, and 
when the eye saw, it gave witness to me ; because I de- 
livered the poor that cried and the fatherless and the 
helpless, the blessing of him that was ready to perish 
came upon me, and I caused the widow's heart to sing for 
joy." No treasure did he count his own so long as there 
were any needy in the sphere of his benevolence. The 
patrimonies of his fathers he sold and distributed in alms. 
The gifts of popes and nobles went to feed the hungry 
and clothe the naked. When forty thousand crowns, the 
price of a principality in Naples which he sold, were 
brought to him he said that a bishop ought not to hold in 
his house so much treasure, and sent his almoners to be- 
stow it in the lowly houses of his flock. In one day it 
was all expended ; nor would he rectify an error of two 
thousand crowns which had been added by mistake. The 
proceeds of his brother's estate in furniture, jewels and 
paintings, amounting to thirty thousand crowns, found the 
same honorable use. An equal sum was raised by the 
sale of his own effects, in a season of special distress. 
The legacy of twenty thousand crowns which his brother's 
widow left him was instantly appropriated. Two hundred 
crowns per month were the regular sum which he ordered 
his steward to pay to the poor of the city, but that amount 
was but a fraction of what he really gave. He came to 
Milan one of the richest prelates in Europe. He died 



34° ST. CHARLES BOEEOMEO. 

almost poor. Yet where he found beggary and want, he 
left comfort, thrift and gratitude. If the palace was strip- 
ped of its ornaments, the lanes and alleys were tenanted 
by a more decent class and mendicants had ceased to 
swarm in the public places. It is said in praise of the 
most benevolent man in New England, long since called 
away from his works of beautiful charity, that he gave 
away for twenty years half of his income. But of St. 
Charles Borromeo it is recorded that in twenty years he 
gave away ten times the amount of the most princely for- 
tune. His gifts were measured not by his increase but by 
the needs of those who besought him. 

Nor was his care for the poor confined to the supply of 
their temporal needs. He counted it better to give them 
the bread of life than food for their bodies, and he was 
very constant to watch for their spiritual welfare. He 
did not turn over to them priests of the inferior sort, or 
leave them to the dangers of heresy without able protect- 
ors. He set in the most ignorant and destitute quarters 
men to teach and preach, who were wise to discover and 
interpret the true interests of the people and skillful to 
apply the Gospel to their condition. The most retired 
valley of his diocese heard a Gospel as pure as that 
preached in the cathedral pulpit. With no class was the 
Cardinal so severe as with those priests who took ad- 
vantage of the remoteness of the position or the ignorance 
of their hearers, to neglect their proper Christian work. 
He held that a slothful pastor was responsible for the 
errors and sins of his flock, and indirectly, too, accounta- 
ble for their poverty, inasmuch as ignorance and crime 
are the fruitful source of indigence. And in no part of 
his visitations was he a more scrupulous observer than 
where nature or fortune seemed to have limited the privi- 
leges of worshippers. 

And in his spiritual visitations the Cardinal did not 
confine himself to the proper territory of Milan. In the 
cantons of Switzerland he also found work and welcome 
for his wholesome reforms. And the journeys which he 
made through the Grisons and among the high Alps few 
pilgrims even in that age dared attempt. He traversed 
the wildest forests and the most dangerous passes. The 



ST. CHARLES BOBIiOMEO. 341 

torrents and eternal snows could not hinder him from his 
labor of love. Days long he went tramping over the 
glaciers and the rocks, catching in the crevices a foothold, 
hungry and thirsty, yet borne along by an invincible cour- 
age, stopping in each place only long enough to care for 
its needs and learn its spiritual state, opposed sometimes 
by the heretic officials, but winning them always by his 
courtesy and moderation. When he came into a Protestant 
neighborhood it was his custom to go first to the Church 
and prove his devotion by a season of prayer. On a 
second visit which he made to the wild Alpine regions he 
had to deal with a species of sorcery which had spread 
there, in which old women officiated as witches in chief, 
and had suffered even for the abominable crime. The 
good sense of the Cardinal could not quite conquer the 
superstitions of the people. Nor is it certain that he was 
so tar before his age in knowledge as to doubt that the 
strange phenomena which they told were works of the 
Powers of Darkness. An Italian priest may well be par- 
doned for believing what an English judge a century later 
confessed to be a hideous crime. But certain it is, that 
with the visit of St. Charles to the Grisons and his 
preaching, the sorcery ceased, and no more executions for 
witchcraft shocked the people. 

The passage in the life of St. Charles which has been 
most famous in history and which the genius of modern 
Italy has made the theme of its finest romance, is his con- 
duct during the plague. The brilliant colors in Mansoni's 
style have in no wise exaggerated the heroism of the 
Archbishop of Milan in his dealing with that terrible 
scourge. The profane sports of the carnival of the year 
1576 were observed with unusual zeal. All the remon- 
strances of the Cardinal could not hinder the nobles and 
people from their favorite mummeries. There were tour- 
naments in the public square, and the public authorities 
witnessed and shared in the general license. The Holy 
Father could only predict the wrath of God upon a prepa- 
ration so hideous for the season of religious fasting and 
prayer. He was at Lodi attending a funeral service when 
news was brought to him that the plague had broken out 
in Milan, that the governor and nobility had fled and that 



342 ST. CHARLES BORROMEO. 

the riotous joy of the people was changed to consterna- 
tion and terror. He mounted instantly and returned. 
Crowds of people, wild and affrighted, met him in the 
streets, and "misericordia," "mercy," was the universal 
cry. His vicars and canons crowded round him and urged 
him to depart from the plague-stricken city and save his 
valuable life. He answered them only by avowing his 
resolve as a faithful pastor to lay down his life for his 
flock and claimed their assistance in his works of mercy. 
According to Catholic custom he sought to propitiate the 
Deity by an act of public penance, and three times 
walked through the streets with naked feet, and ashes on 
his head and a cord about his neck, bearing in his hands 
the crucifix, at the head of a grand procession of penitents, 
with all public marks of the deepest sorrow. He preached 
continually and fasted every day. He went through the 
wards of the hospital praying with the sick, administering 
remedies, and composing decently the limbs of the newly 
dead. No house in the most infected districts was omitted 
in his visit. He carried the holy wafer and oil into the 
most squalid abodes, that no one should die without the 
comforts of faith. Contending with the cowardice of 
magistrates, he organized the heroic priests that devoted 
their lives with his into bands which should do the work of 
charity and attendance on the sick which the occasion 
called for. The churches and the episcopal houses were 
given up to the terrified fugitives from the infection. By 
his will he made the hospital of the city heir to his estate, 
if he should be carried off with the rest. His plate was 
melted down and was sold with his furniture to buy bread 
for the hungry mouths of the homeless. Even his straw 
bed was given up and he slept upon a board. As the 
plague increased, his strength seemed miraculously aided. 
Day and night, on horseback, and on foot, often alone, he 
went about on his errand of mercy. When the neighbor- 
ing villages caught the infection he was there to advise, to 
assist, and to provide for Christian burial. Severe* were 
his rebukes to those who tried in reckless debauchery to 
forget their danger. Yet when these were attacked, he 
was at hand to hear their confession and pardon their 
sins. The danger of famine came to increase the horror. 



ST. CHARLES BOBROMEO. 343 

Great as was the Cardinal's charity, his private stores 
among so many were but as five loaves to five thousand 
men. But if he could not repeat the Saviour's miracle, 
he found means in a way almost as strange to open the 
purses and hearts of his people. He became a beggar at 
the gates of the rich and opened the doors of luxurious 
houses to the forsaken and destitute. Sometimes his 
heart almost sank within him when he saw how every day 
seemed to make the prospect more awful. But he trusted 
in God. One night when he came home' from his weary 
rounds, hungry and worn, he found no morsel of bread in 
the house. He knew not where to turn. The charity of 
all his friends was exhausted. He had borrowed until he 
was every man's debtor. And it seemed now that he must 
die with his people. But as he prayed in his oratory, a 
gentleman came there with an offering of a thousand 
crowns from the chief men of the city. God so answered 
his prayers. He rose refreshed, and before he slept it was 
spent in his mission of mercy. 

Months long the scourge of Milan lasted, and ceased 
only when winter came. Seventeen thousand, one hun- 
dred and twenty of them ecclesiastics, had died of the 
pestilence. Commerce had been prostrated, the right arm 
of labor paralyzed, and the rich city was poor. But the 
people thanked God that he who had been instant for 
them in season and out of season, whose prayers had 
turned aside the anger of God, whose goods had been 
divided to their hunger, who had courted hardships, dan- 
ger, insult and humiliation, that he might save them from 
perishing, so young and yet so holy, was still spared to 
them. From all sides congratulations came. The selfish 
Italian Cardinals could hardly comprehend such heroic 
devotion. The sternness of heresy relented at such an 
evidence of the Christian spirit and confessed that a 
Catholic prelate might still be a Christian apostle. The 
only answer to these praises which the Cardinal made was 
to profess that he had done but his simple duty, that he 
should have been guilty before man and God if he failed 
in such an extremity to show himself the shepherd of his 
flock. 

But I fear lest the fascination of this theme may lead 



344 ST. CHARLES BORROMEO. 

me to tire you by too numerous details. I omit, therefore, 
the account of his journeys to Turin and to Rome, the 
works which he did, and the honors which he received in 
those cities, to add only a general view of his character 
and influence. He is the only instance that I have found 
in Christian history of a faultless bishop, not faultless as 
a man, but faultless in his office as a priest and ruler of the 
Church. He had the ability to master all the intricate 
duties of his office, and the patience to endure all its 
trials. An inflexible firmness tempered by an unfailing 
charity, a prudence which waited always upon most fer- 
vent zeal, a practical spirit, keeping him from the excesses 
of ascetic piety, a heart in which the love of God and the 
love of brethren were beautifully balanced, all fitted him 
to have the charge of the Church of God. He preached 
as a bishop should preach, ambitious of no display, seek- 
ing no praise for originality of idea, or splendor of diction, 
not striving by charm of voice or by grace of style to win 
praise to himself, nor yet thundering in their ears a mes- 
sage of terror, but always as if he were breaking to them 
bread at the altar. His words were simple, slow, weighty 
in spiritual wisdom, lofty in religious faith. They gained 
their force from the character of him who uttered them, 
and it was always a mystery to the rhetoricians of Rome 
how one so heavy and awkward in speech should draw 
such crowds to his preaching. The secret of it was that 
the preaching came from the heart and life. It was not 
the eloquence of scholarship, or art. or even of vehement 
zeal for dogmas, but the eloquence of a tried and ex- 
perienced faith. The people knew that their bishop loved 
them and would lay down his life for them, knew that he 
had sacrificed for them rank, wealth, luxury and personal 
ambition ; that he lived for their welfare. It was enough 
for them that he had refused the temptations of advance- 
ment at Rome to come and be their pastor. 

The true bishop aims to be useful, not to be great. He 
is set not to be ministered unto, but to minister. And 
usefulness was the first, last, and only end of the life of 
St. Charles Borromeo. To this he gave up the tastes of 
his station and even the impulses of his piety. This 
saved him first from the office of a senator, and afterward 



ST. CHARLES BOBROMEO. 345 

from the solitude of a cloister. He was never weary in 
doing good, and he had the fertile mind which suggests 
continually new methods and occasions of benevolent 
action. The multiplied duties of his place only delighted 
him the more. He wanted no recreation but a change 
from one philanthropic work to another. It is recorded 
that in all his twenty years of Episcopal service he never 
once walked or rode for pleasure merely, never read or 
wrote except for some practical immediate purpose. He 
left no book of meditations, and spent no time in the 
poor work of nourishing his own interior life as separate 
from the salvation of his flock. The folios of his works 
are the digests of his rules and laws, and letters on busi- 
ness connected with his charge. He had no stint of labor 
but time and strength. And he fasted and denied himself 
always for a practical end. 

There was a wonderful mingling, too, in his address of 
that grace and sincerity which should mark a bishop's 
demeanor. No man ever accused him of deception in 
look or word, yet his kind condescension would make the 
poorest feel at ease with him, and his tender smile disarm 
the hatred of his bitterest foe. He had no patience with 
the least word of flattery or sign of deceit. " My Lord," 
said one of his courtiers to him, " I will tell you frankly 
what I think of this affair." "What, Sir," instantly re- 
plied the Cardinal, "Do you not always speak frankly ? 
Know that I want no friends whose tongue is not always 
true to their thought." He had confidence in the good 
will of those who pretended to love him, and despised 
only those who threatened. When a package was brought 
to him revealing a scheme to destroy his life, he quietly 
burned it, taking no means to arrest the guilty parties. 
He was wont to say that if his life were lost in the dis- 
charge of duty, God would bless that loss to his Church. 
His rebukes to the negligent were so directed as to bring 
shame and remorse without hostility. One of his bishops 
incautiously remarked that he did not know what to do. 
When the Cardinal reached home, he sat down in his 
study and wrote out a list of duties of a good bishop, 
adding under each article, "and after this shall a bishop 
say that he knows not what to do," and sent it to the 



346 ST. CHARLES BORROMEO. 

offending prelate. The remark was not repeated. No 
one could say that he degraded the dignity of his purple, 
and yet he was always ready to take upon himself the 
neglected work of his dependents. 

He had, too, in rare perfection that individualising 
faculty on which the success of a bishop so much depends. 
He knew the children by name and by person. He kept 
in his memory the wants and circumstances of all his 
colleges, convents, almoners, and prelates. He knew who 
were deserving and who were promising, and he kept his 
eye upon them. With intuitive sagacity he detected the 
signs of future eminence in the Church, and helped to 
hasten it. Youngest of all the cardinals, he was yet most 
powerful in the conclave, and more than one Pope was 
chosen by his suggestion. Yet he was as careful to select 
wisely his parish priest as the Head of all Christendom. 
He listened respectfully to all honest opinion, though it 
might not suit his own, and loved no servility. He wanted 
every one of his dependents to act according to conscience, 
and not according to his master's plan. He did not ex- 
pect that all should be like himself, and probably never 
any man in the Church had so much power and zeal with 
so little of dogmatic arrogance. He burnt no heretics. 
He uttered no anathemas, though he was a Catholic of the 
truest stamp, and could see in heresy no good and no 
hope. He was, as the Apostle says, swift to hear, slow to 
speak and slow to wrath. 

And never was bishop more methodical in the ordering of 
his duties. His multiplied charges were all arranged by 
days and weeks and months and years, so that he knew 
always what to do and when to do it. There was no par- 
tiality and no omission in the distribution of his care. 
And by this extraordinary system he accomplished in 
twenty years an amount of Episcopal labor which no other 
bishop has approached. His personal influence was felt 
in every city, village, parish, convent, hamlet, and home of 
one of the most populous provinces in Europe. And yet 
with all this capacity of labor, the temperament of St. 
Charles was sluggish, and the action of his mind heavy 
rather than brilliant. One of the weaknesses which he 
knew and fought against, was a sleepiness which some- 



-ST. CHARLES BOEROMEO. 347 

times caught him at unseasonable hours, even in church, 
so the gossips complained. One day when this fit seemed 
to come upon him, a prelate who had been preaching 
whispered to his neighbor, " If I were Director to Car- 
dinal Borromeo, I would make him sleep in his bed, and 
keep awake in the sermon." But when the guests were 
assembled at dinner the Cardinal amazed them by repeat- 
ing passages from the sermon, of which they supposed 
that he had not heard a word. 

It is hard to find a parallel to this great Christian 
pastor. The Catholic Church furnishes no other, the 
Protestant no peer. The name which most readily sug- 
gests itself to the comparison is that of Thomas Chalmers. 
But he with all his wide parochial efficiency and his su- 
perior genius, must yield the pastoral palm to the Italian 
Cardinal. There were many points of resemblance in 
their character and work. They were alike in physical 
constitution, in power of endurance, in practical tastes 
and tendencies, in care for the suffering classes, in heroic 
exposure of life in their Master's cause. The quality of 
faith in both was the same, and the burden of preaching, 
too. But while the eloquence of Chalmers was great as 
it rose to the highest themes, as it lightened and thundered 
in the upper skies of thought, the word of Borromeo 
gained power as it came down and entered into the sim- 
pler offices of home and domestic life. The piety of 
Chalmers inspired men to see visions and awakened 
great thoughts about the spirit-world, about heaven, and the 
judgment. It lifted men to God's world. The piety of 
Borromeo comforted men to go on in duty below and 
taught them what to do to make life serene, and beautiful, 
and happy. It led God in his Church from home to home 
to visit the believers. 

But I will not pursue this parallel. A single page shall 
close this protracted story, too long to hear, it may be, but 
all too short for the theme. On the night of the second 
of November, the day of All Souls, the report was given 
in the streets of Milan that their Archbishop was dying. 
The whole city was soon excited. Every man left his 
house. Some thronged to the churches to pray. Some 
waited to hear instant tidings at the gate of the palace. 
Solemn processions of penitents passed along the way. 



34§ ST. CHARLES BORBOMEO. 

Cries were heard and sobs from the chambers, where 
women lamented. The convents, in the height of their 
grief, forgot all discipline, and set no bounds to their 
sighs and tears. With the earliest light the solemn tolling 
of all the bells told that a great sorrow had passed upon 
the people. It renewed the traditions of battles and 
sieges. Every one felt that he had lost his father and his 
defender, and feared some great calamity to come. Soon 
every man had told with his neighbor the story of his last 
hour, what a peaceful, beautiful, Christian death the great 
father had died, so young, yet so mature in sainthood. 
Such a funeral was never seen in that Cathedral, in which 
the terrible grief of a whole people was so condensed, 
and unrestrained even by the majesty of the place and 
scene. The funeral eulogy was pronounced by a friend 
of his household, and the tears and sobs which broke its 
flow were witness that it was no formal praise. Solemnly 
into the vault before the choir where the holy man had 
been wont to lead their devotions the body was lowered, 
and the people who for so many centuries had kept first 
in their honors the name of Ambrose consented now to 
place above the saint of their fathers this greater Apostle 
of Christ. His tomb became at once the shrine of pil- 
grimage. The piety of the nations knelt there. Such 
gifts were left there as no palace could show. And now 
no estimate can reach the wealth of gold and silver which 
adorn that shrine. The curious stop in the Cardinal's 
chapel to wonder at the richness of this tomb. But the 
reverent student of history, who remembers what life these 
costly testimonies commemorate, beholds in this splendid 
sepulchre the proof that the heart of man is more loyal 
to goodness than to greatness, to the saint than to the 
hero. So in the great Cathedral of England a nation 
has just solemnly entombed the body of its greatest 
man, with a funeral more splendid than the nation ever 
saw. But the grave-stone of Wellington will soon be read 
with no more reverence than that of other heroes who lie 
there. While Protestants beyond the sea will continue to 
leave at the tomb of the good bishop of Milan if not 
silver and gold, at least a tribute of gratitude and rever- 
ence to a virtue that recalled in a degenerate age the 
blameless life of the Saviour of men. 



THE SOCINI. 349 



XIV. 

SOCINUS AND HIS FOLLOWERS. 

At a meeting some years ago of the American Bible 
Society in New York, it chanced that one of the speakers 
appointed was a distinguished lawyer from the neighbor- 
hood of Boston, a man of wide reputation both for 
wisdom, worth and piety. As he came forward to speak, 
after several addresses which made up in length what they 
lacked in interest, I remarked to my neighbor, an intelli- 
gent looking Presbyterian divine, that I thought now we 
should have something worth hearing. "No !" answered 
he quickly, " I believe the man is a Socinian." And his 
tone conveyed the idea that it was impossible for a So- 
cinian to say anything true, good, or beautiful. I wanted 
to turn upon him the argument that if so shrewd, learned, 
and excellent a man could be a Socinian it was a fair pre- 
sumption that the name was honorable to bear, and the 
system it signified a true one. It is likely that this fre- 
quent reproach has made, too, many ashamed of the 
name, when an investigation of the history connected with 
it would show that far more praise than blame belongs to 
it. If the character and spirit of its founder gives honor 
to any sect I would far sooner bear a name which was 
illustrated by men so pure and noble as Laelius and 
Faustus Socinus than the name of the stern ruler of 
Geneva, the murderer of Servetus. 

Many persons have an idea that the Unitarian heresy, 
as they choose to call it, is a small and recent affair, be- 
ginning in New England some fifty or sixty years ago. 
The better informed, indeed, have a tradition about a cer- 
tain Arius, who made a good deal of stir by denying the 
Trinity in the early age of the Church but was finally put 
down. Some perhaps have heard that another teacher 
by name Socinus, went farther in his denials and said that 



35° THE SOCINL 



Christ was a mere man, and that he was put down too ; 
though who Socinus was, where he came from, when he 
lived and what his character and influence were they are 
quite unable to conjecture. About as far as any one gets 
in the matter is that Socinus had something to do with 
Poland, and that he lived not a great while after Luther 
and Calvin. It would surprise a good many to be told 
the fact that Socinus did not originate any sect or broach 
any novel heresy, that he taught only what a large number 
of the most eminent in the Church had believed before 
him, and that his opinions, though persecuted fiercely by 
the dogmatism of the reformers, were never put down, but 
gained strength, and in spite of obstacles have continued 
to this day to flourish where they were first preached. In 
Poland, Hungary, Transylvania, not to speak of Switzer- 
land, Holland, and England, the Unitarian system of re- 
ligion is as ancient as the Puritan, and so far as the char- 
acter of its confessors is concerned quite as respectable. 
That faith is neither novel nor heretical in which such 
men as Locke could teach, Newton could live, and Milton 
could die, and which is joined so intimately to the tragic 
heroism of the most unfortunate nation of Europe. 

We have spoken before of the beginnings of the Re- 
form and of the men who were leaders in the great schism 
of the sixteenth century which severed half of Europe 
from its allegiance to the Catholic Church. We are to 
take up now the earliest developments of reform, its off- 
shoots, its extreme movements, not so much the sects to 
which it gave rise as the directions in which it moved. 
And the four directions of development which we specify 
are not merely fanciful. They have each separate marks 
and characteristics, and they correspond too with the 
phases of reaction in the Catholic Church, which we have 
just been surveying. The antithesis to Catholic reform in 
doctrine, in action, in piety and in life is found in the sepa- 
rate religious movements in Northern Germany, of France, 
of Holland and of England. Hardly had the finished de- 
crees of the Council of Trent been proclaimed to the 
world when the acts of the Polish brethren set forth a 
creed diametrically opposite, built on another foundation, 
with other dogmas, and in another spirit. The zeal of 



THE SOCINL 3S 1 



Ignatius and his companions was met and matched by the 
fanatic enthusiasm of the Huguenots, who burned to 
spread in their native land the views of Calvin, as the 
Jesuits were ready to carry the Gospel of Christ far and 
wide. In the Low Countries, subject to the same rule as 
mountainous Spain, a theology came in which spurned the 
convent life and was the fiercest foe of piety like that of 
Teresa of the flaming heart. The lawyer and scholar 
Grotius established on the plain a practical faith quite 
unlike that castle of the soul which the Spanish nun went 
about among the hills to fortify and build. And with 
many points of resemblance, the most striking contrast to 
the sweet charity and benevolence and forgiveness of St. 
Charles Borromeo was shown in the cold, stern, terrible 
sanctity of the Puritan life. 

We speak in this lecture of what may be called the ex- 
treme dogmatic movement of the Reformation, and of that 
party which carried its principles to their legitimate con- 
clusions, in a Christian and Scriptural Rationalism. Luther 
emancipated human reason from its fetters to tradition 
and authority, but he did not apply it when freed to the 
investigation of all Christian truths. He was a disciple of 
the fathers, though he denied the authority of the Pope, 
and the submission which he refused to the decrees of 
Leo and the Councils he yielded to the dogmas of Augus- 
tine and the ancient Church. He did not use the freedom 
which he claimed except to rebel against existing powers. 
But there were others who acted upon his protest more 
thoroughly and dared to question many things that were 
taught as Christian truth beside the scheme of indul- 
gences and the folly of the mass ; who ascended to first 
principles, and sought to construct for themselves a faith 
that should harmonize with right reason in all its parts 
without losing its Scriptural basis, which should leave to 
the Divine Nature the mystery of unspeakable grandeur, 
but not of a mathematical puzzle, and rescue the Divine 
government at once from the charge of weakness, fickle- 
ness and cruelty; which should recognize the admitted 
facts of physical science in regard to the nature of man, 
while it preserved the promise of his immortal destiny, 
and should not contradict his consciousness ; which should 



35 2 THE SOCINL 



give Christ all the honor which he claimed and make his 
salvation a practical and broad spiritual influence instead 
of a mere forensic scheme ; which should make of religion 
in a word, a genuine science, friendly to all other discov- 
ed truth. 

This tendency to a rational religion was confined at first 
to no one land, but broke out in all the countries of Eu- 
rope on the first proclamation of religious liberty. Carl- 
stadt, at first the friend and ally of Luther, but afterward 
bitterly hated and persecuted by him, was its Apostle in 
Northern Germany ; and the number of his disciples was 
not small. The Spaniard Michael Servetus carried it from 
place to place, fleeing from the Inquisition till at last he 
suffered in Geneva for his temerity. At Basle and Zurich 
where the free spirit of Zwingle had made the people 
hospitable alike to learning and misfortune, it found a 
welcome, and the former city was three centuries ago, as 
it is to-day, the retreat of exiled scholars and of harassed 
faith. But the earliest centre of the new Rationalism 
seems to have been Venice, where liberty of conscience 
was granted by the government, and the Inquisition was 
held in bad repute. Here the great scholars of Italy 
gathered to study the Scriptures in their original tongue, 
to discuss theology and to compare with each other the 
results of their inquiries. Here, if not encouraged by the 
public authorities, they were at least not molested in their 
assemblies, and in several towns of the republic, particu- 
larly at Vicenza, regular meetings, weekly or monthly, as 
the case might be, were held to consult concerning the 
reform of the creed. And hither came on the very year 
when the first action of the Council of Trent began, to 
unite by his comprehensive wisdom, to guide by his pru- 
dence, and to dignify by his blameless life, the delibera- 
tions so rash, of an attempt so daring, the man whose 
name still designates the chief of Protestant heresies, the 
Etruscan Laelius Socinus. 

The city Sienna in Etruria is famous in Christian his- 
tory from its union with the name of Catherine, one of the 
holiest of Catholic saints. But it was more highly honored 
in being the birthplace of the elder Socinus. By the 
lineage of both his parents, Laelius was allied with the 



THE S0CIN1. 353 



noblest families of Tuscany, the Piccolomini, the Petrucii, 
and the Salvetti. Eloquence, beauty, culture and courage 
were his proper inheritance. Law was the profession of 
his ancestors, and his father and elder brother well sus- 
tained in that profession the family tradition. From 
childhood Laelius was taught that a free spirit of inquiry 
was the only foundation for sound knowledge, and that 
patient investigation was the sure pioneer of truth. The 
rules of evidence which his father applied to the details 
of cases and books of statute, Laelius applied to the great 
record of all law, and ventured to interpret the Scriptures 
as he would have read the Institutes and Pandects of 
Justinian. His keen scrutiny failed not to observe the 
incongruity between the doctrines of the Church around 
him and its ancient text books of faith. He could not 
find in them many of the articles which the creeds made 
essential to salvation. Doubts began to arise in his mind, 
which more thorough investigation only confirmed. The 
studies of his kindred did not run in the same direction, 
and the wisdom of his father did not lie in the same 
province. In the great law schools of Italy at this period 
the Gospel was not deemed important enough to foster 
study. At the age of twenty-one Laelius, as we men- 
tioned, came to Venice, hoping to find in the societies of 
that republic a solution of his doubts and sympathy with 
his inquiries. He found this among the scholars there, 
but he lost it almost as soon. 

For that decisive year 1546, memorable in so many ways 
for the death of Luther, the opening of the Council of 
Trent, the reconciliation between the Pope and the Em- 
peror, brought also the Inquisition to Venice. The fires 
of persecution began to burn and the free thought of 
Italy furnished its martyrs. The meetings were broken 
up. The Doge and Senate were forced into a weak com- 
pliance with the demands of foreign lords and withdrew 
their protection from the heretics. The scholars scattered 
themselves to the Protestant nations, some to England, 
some to Poland, many to Switzerland. Laelius left Venice 
not as an exile for his opinions but as a traveller and 
scholar. Four years he spent in visiting the principal 
countries of Europe, making the acquaintance of men of 

23 



354 THE SOCINI. 



letters, and coming into bonds of the most friendly al- 
liance with the chief reformers, which even his heresies 
could not break. Melancthon was his constant corres- 
pondent., The months which Socinus passed at Wittemberg 
were spent in the closest intimacy and such testimonials 
from the hand of the Reformer went with the young Italian 
that he was received everywhere among Protestants with 
honor. Calvin was one of his earliest acquaintances and 
continued until his death to advise and warn him. In 
Zurich he found a home with the pastor Bullinger, the 
successor and friend of Zwingle, and the relation between 
them was almost that of father and son. But nowhere 
in all his travels did he find a place where it was safe or 
comfortable to preach his opinions openly. Nor did he 
care to be a preacher. He felt that the time had not 
quite come to make public this radical protest against 
Rome, this protest against the whole, system of faith from 
its foundation downward. He was content to wait for 
some bolder hand to seize a more favorable moment. 

But in the circles of private friendship the nature of 
Laelius Socinus was too frank to allow any concealment 
of his views. There was not one of the principal mys- 
teries of faith of which he did not make question in some 
of his letters. The Trinity, the Atonement, the resurrec- 
tion of the body, all form the subject of ingenious discus- 
sion with Calvin and others. His position as ambassador 
from Germany and Poland to the Venetian state gave to 
his opinions more importance, and when, at the death of 
his father in 1556, he went home to settle the estate, they 
discovered in his reluctance to receive many of the doc- 
trines of Catholic faith that his radical views still, after 
the travel and experience of ten years, remained un- 
changed. Six years later he died at Zurich. Earnest 
efforts had been made to have him expelled from the 
State as a heretic and a blasphemer. And some who re- 
spected him as a scholar and a man of uprightness feared 
so much the poison of his influences that they secretly 
approved these efforts. But the early death of Socinus 
anticipated them. And he left behind, if not a wide at 
least, a high reputation for Christian virtues and liberal 
spirit. His denials of dogmas did not embitter his temper 



THE SOCINL 355 



or make him a destructive. He granted to others the 
liberty which he claimed. The sternness of Calvin's re- 
bukes could not irritate him, while it could frighten him as 
little from his free inquiries. No one could say that the 
heir of aristocratic races lowered his dignity by associating 
with rebellious priests. Without concealment or com- 
promise, yet without violence or importunity, he uttered 
his views when the occasion served him, and died predicting 
that his nephew would become an apostle of the truth, 
which he only dimly prophesied. 

The wider fame of Faustus Socinus has unjustly 
eclipsed the services of his uncle in the cause of liberal 
religion. In age they were not widely separate. Laelius 
had not reached the full stature of manhood, when his 
brother Alexander's son was born. Deprived of his 
parents at an early age, the young Faustus had few advan- 
tages of literary culture, and studied but little of that 
philosophy which his father had taught with such renown 
in the University of Padua. It is strange that with so 
slight a discipline in logic and theology, he was able to 
write so soon and so well on the great subjects of religious 
controversy. Much, indeed, had been done for him by his 
uncle. But he was still a. child when Laelius departed on 
his long years of travel, and he was left chiefly to his own 
resources. But the boy had a mind of rare acuteness and 
an insatiable thirst for knowledge ; and what fortune failed 
to do for him nature accomplished. He adopted with 
great ardor the opinions of his uncle, and found soon that 
to profess them freely, he must leave his native land. The 
death of his uncle broke the tie which bound him to Italy, 
though he passed after that twelve years in honorable em- 
ployment in the Tuscan Court. He had reached the 
mature age of thirty-five when he took up his residence at 
Basle, on the Rhine, hoping in that hospitable city to find a 
permanent home as a teacher of Christian theology. In- 
heriting the numerous manuscripts of his uncle, he em- 
ployed himself in giving them shape and method, and 
framing into a consistent system what had been left there 
in a crude and undigested form. And he gave himself 
with more intense zeal to the study of the Scriptures. 

Three years passed on, when he began to appear as a 



35 6 THE SO C 'INI. 



public debater, boldly defending the thesis that the Trinity 
was a pagan and no Christian doctrine, and that Christ 
was the created Son, and not the uncreated God. These 
controversies gave him fame. He was called into Tran- 
sylvania, where the eloquence and learning of George Blan- 
drata had already established many churches of Unitarian 
views. Here a fantastic zealot, by name Francis David, 
had advanced views which threatened to destroy the 
harmony and sound faith of the reformed churches, and it 
was thought that the clear reason of Socinus might be 
useful in checking the disorder. But the enterprise failed, 
and a contagious disease sent Socinus still farther, to visit 
the churches of Poland, where he might expect more 
sympathy and success. An early visit of Laelius Socinus, 
accompanied by one Spiritus from Holland, and a discus- 
sion which they held on the question, " whether there are 
three gods," had left doubts in the minds of several 
eminent men whether the common notion of the Trinity 
were true. The suggestions of separate teachers passed 
into the discussions of the Synods, and with every new 
meeting the Unitarian side gained proselytes. The doc- 
tors of the church took the alarm. Remonstrances were 
sent against all discussion of this great fundamental 
mystery. And the result finally was a schism, which 
separated into unequal branches of the Reformed Church 
those who held to the Trinity, and those who received the 
simple unity of God. In this latter division there were 
wide differences of opinion, some taking the name of 
Famovius, holding to the high Arian notion of the pre- 
existence of Christ, and his superhuman, though not his 
divine, nature ; and others, bearing the title of Budneans, 
maintaining the simple humanitarian view that Jesus was 
a man, though the best and holiest of men. By union and 
perseverance, however, they succeeded in obtaining from 
the government an edict of toleration, and made such 
progress that before long the chief cities of the south of 
Poland were substantially possessed by them. 

This was the state of religious parties when Socinus 
arrived in Poland. He did not find there the hearty wel- 
come which he expected. His view of Christ, midway 
between that of the two leading parties, satisfied neither. 



THE SOCINI. 357 



It was too radical for the strict party, it was too strict for 
the radical party. He seemed to the teachers of the land 
presumptuous in attempting to instruct them. How 
should an Italian vagrant enlighten a land where the 
Bible had so long been read, and studies in theology were 
native to the people ? To avoid persecution Socinus re- 
tired to the estate of a nobleman, a few miles from 
Cracow, where his person was secure and he was treated 
with such kindness that he could forget the enmity of the 
churches. A marriage with the daughter of the house 
seemed to secure his fortune, but it was the prelude of 
most bitter reverses. Death deprived him soon of his 
wife and his benefactors. Sickness prostrated his frame 
and weakened his mental powers. News came to him 
that his estates in Italy were forfeited, and that he could 
hope no longer to receive any income from that source. 
The position of the Unitarian church in the land was in- 
secure by the struggles of competitors for the elective 
monarchy, and the poor exile might feel that his lot had 
fallen in an evil time. 

But his courage did not fail. As worldly prospects 
grew darker he gave himself with a more single devotion 
to what he believed to be the cause of truth and God. In 
the Synods he maintained his views with great vigor and 
fertile argument, and one book after another came from 
his pen. Neither persuasions nor threats could silence 
him. and when, after the publication of his work "on the 
Saviour," he was assaulted in person, dragged from his 
sick bed into the street, exposed half naked in the market 
place, menaced with punishment, with his furniture broken 
and his manuscripts destroyed, they could extort from him 
no word of recantation. He found protection for the 
remainder of his life at the house of another nobleman, 
where he spent his time in reconciling the differences 
of the liberal creeds, and refuting the errors of the 
ancient systems. He died at the close of the year 1604 in 
his sixty-fifth year, welcoming the event as a release from 
earthly troubles and a summons to nearer visions of great 
spiritual truth. On his tomb was inscribed the couplet: 
" Luther destroyed the house of Babylon, Calvin the walls, 
but Socinus the foundations." " Tota licet Babylon destruxit 
tecta Lutherus, muros Calvinus, sed fundamenta Socinus." 



35 8 THE S0CIN1. 



The single child which he left became the wife of a dis- 
tinguished Polish nobleman, and through her descendants 
he is to this day the ancestor of many eminent Unitarians, 
both in the State and Church. His grandson, Witsowa- 
tius, was a divine of great influence in the body of liberal 
Christians, both through his acquirements and the weight 
of his character, and his filial piety never forgot the first 
confessor in the family of the views which he cherished. 

The character of Socinus needs not to be elaborately 
drawn. His enemies have freely admitted that he was an 
able, an attractive, and a virtuous man, captivating by the 
force of his genius, the fervor of his eloquence and beauty 
of his life. Less learned than many of the doctors of his 
age, few could surpass him in acquaintance with the text 
of that sacred word which in all disputes is the Christian's 
authority. If he lacked acquaintance with Plato and Tully, 
he was familiar with the mind of Paul and John. A defender 
of reason and the intellect, he never gave these the mastery 
over the clear precepts of Christ. His insight seemed to 
reveal at once the meaning of obscure passages, to make 
the dark places light, and the rough places plain. It was 
at once rapid and wide, seeing things quickly and seeing 
them thoroughly. And he had a singular mental integrity. 
There was no weak spot, through which error could gain 
entrance. Logical absurdities had no insinuation by which 
his seat of conviction could he reached. He believed that 
the only faith good for anything was one which a man might 
justify to himself and to others, which he could hold on its 
own merits, not on any traditional authority. He had no 
such reverence for great names that he would allow them 
to persuade him into a surrender of right reason. He was 
an independent thinker, independent of his own party as 
much as of the party of prescription, a Protestant of the 
Protestants. And if he believed less than other great 
teachers, he believed what he did believe with all the 
intensity of a clear knowledge. He looked before and 
behind, and saw where his faith arose and whither it 
tended, its relations both to abstract truth and to practical 
life. 

He was a true enthusiast, some would say, a zealot. He 
did what few are apt to do, sacrificed family pride, rank, 



THE SO C INI. 359 



fortune, station, the most flattering worldly prospects to 
the promulgation of his unpopular views. Many have 
relinquished worldly advantages to serve in the ranks of 
Christian confessors, and the lives of Ignatius and Borgia 
had proved that the flower of knighthood may humble 
itself to shed the Gospel fragrance. But the religion to 
which these eminent saints gave up their fortune was pop- 
ular and powerful. They sacrificed nothing for abstract 
ideas. But Socinus had faith in abstract ideas, and his 
zeal went to establish that which for one thousand years 
had borne the Church's anathema. For this he wrote, and 
labored and prayed, travelled from place to place, and was 
ready, if the need came, to suffer death. He knew that 
heretics like himself could have no place among the 
honored martyrs of the Church ; that their labors and 
sacrifices would be hastily passed over, and no honor be 
left to them on the pages of history. But he did not 
repent of the part which he had chosen. He would accept 
no gifts where they might weaken or unsettle his earnest- 
ness in his faith, or modify his opinion. Nor would differ- 
ence or enmity on minor points hinder him from working 
with those who mainly agreed with him. He prized the 
cause of God higher than his own comfort. " When I 
came into Poland," said he, " I desired nothing more 
earnestly than to be united to the brethren in the closest 
ties of communion, though I found that in many points of 
religion, they thought differently from me, as many do to 
this day : and God knoweth, what and how great things I 
suffer on this account ; declining in the meantime no 
labors, however hazardous or hard, which either the breth- 
ren themselves have enjoined me, or which I hope may be 
useful to our Churches." 

As has been finely said of another, Socinus had a 
Protestant mind, but a Catholic heart. He cherished no 
theological hatreds. If his words at times seemed harsh 
and even fierce, they were not malignant. He conceded 
to an opponent all the freedom which he claimed for him- 
self, and he endeavored to judge candidly the arguments 
which he tried to refute. His was no spirit of intolerance. 
And he brought into his debates no personalities. In his 
most sharp controversy, he tells his adversary, "if you 



360 THE MCI'NL 



study to practice purity of life and Christian sanctity, 
whatever may be your sentiment on the subject of our 
debate, I will always acknowledge you for my brother in 
Christ, and will think there is a sufficient agreement 
between us." Nothing was more abhorrent to his heart 
than the thought of propagating or suppressing a religion 
by force. He might deny future salvation to Papists and 
infidels, but he would not shut these out from their earthly 
civil rights. He might call the opinion of Francis David 
and his party, subordinating Christ to Moses, and the 
Gospel to the Jewish Law, " an impious and detestable 
doctrine." But he clears himself by an elaborate defence 
from the charge of persecuting this unfortunate man. Yet, 
like Luther and the other reformers, he is not unwilling to 
have such blasphemers shut up as madmen, where their 
corrupting influence may do no harm among the people. 
He did not think it expedient that men whom he believed 
insane should be set in the Churches to preach and teach. 
If his theory of toleration be not the perfect one of this 
age of light, it was at least far in advance of the theory of 
his cotemporary Reformers. 

Few heretics have escaped so completely the charge of 
personal immorality. No one could say that Faustus 
Socinus flung off the restraints of the prevalent faith, that 
he might give more license to his appetite or gratify his 
pride. In all his habits, he was exemplary. Modesty, a 
hereditary virtue, grew upon him with his years. His con- 
fidence was the confidence of truth, and not of vanity. 
Taking no means, like the Catholic zealots, to mortify the 
flesh, he was yet sparing as a monk of physical indul- 
gences, and preferred to give in charity what he could save 
from appetite. Making no parade of his humility by 
squalidness of dress, or servility of manners, he showed it 
best in the style of his phrases and his unaffected diffi- 
dence. He was sensible of his own infirmities and had a 
quick and tender conscience. Yet he cared less about 
himself than about the truth. Naturally quick to take 
offence, he schooled himself to bear personal insults and 
reproaches, and the misfortunes which came so rapidly 
upon him. His piety was a deep, warm and continual 
glow of love to God, not expressing itself in tears and 



THE SOCINL 361 



prayers so much as in a manly persuasion of other men to 
his faith. The singleness of his worship helped him to 
feel a genuine gratitude. His letters begin and end with 
the name of the Divine Being. In all his discussions 
about the Nature of God, he never forgot the reverence 
due to that great name. In affliction, he leaned upon the 
invisible arm, and in joy, he referred all his good gifts to 
God. No writer is more free with those expressions which 
mark the presence of a living and unfeigned faith in a 
spiritual Father. 

That Socinus was a good man, even malice could not 
deny. His enemies confessed his eminence in the practi- 
cal Christian graces. Yet he was a heretic of the 
heretics. He held opinions which some called infidel 
then, and which many ignorantly call infidel now. His 
view of God and Christ, of the nature and needs of man, 
was certainly different from the received creed, and no 
portrait of his moral excellence can remove from him the 
honor or the stigma, as men may choose to think it, of 
being the chief organizer in modern times of Unitarian 
views in religion. It is fit, therefore, that we should state 
the principal articles in his creed, that it may be judged 
whether he rightly deserves the name of Heresiarch. The 
materials for our judgment are ample. The works of 
Socinus make two volumes of the seven folios which illus- 
trate the literary industry and genius of the Polish 
brethren. And the Racovian catechism, which still re- 
mains a text-book in the churches of Hungary and Tran- 
sylvania, is mainly compiled from his words and writings. 
The writings of Socinus are not only numerous but ex- 
ceedingly various. Sometimes they are controversial, 
sometimes expository, sometimes epistles, and then homil- 
ies, now theological, and now practical. Yet his peculiar 
system forms the basis of all the argument, the criticism, 
the exhortation and the friendship. It comes into the in- 
terpretation of the sermon on the Mount, not less than 
into the discussion of John's Logos. The tracts on 
Baptism, the Supper, and the duty of believers, could not 
have been written by a Trinitarian more than the book on 
the theme " Christ the Son of God." The creed of no 
teacher was more solidly built or more clearly expressed. 



362 THE SO C INI. 



The chief article of the heresy of Socinus was his view 
of the Saviour. He held that Christ was born miracu- 
lously of a pure virgin, yet was human in his person and 
attributes, a brother of the race of man ; that his relation 
to God was not that of identity, but of sonship. He was 
the Christ, the anointed of God, honored above all other 
mortals, though subject like them to the physical laws. 
He was sent by God to bear to men tidings of his will. 
He was empowered by God to show men the way of salva- 
tion. He was to be a king of God's people. He was to 
be the chief bishop of God's church. He was to be the 
great High Priest who should distribute pardon ; the 
Mediator to reconcile man and God. In him were the 
ancient prophecies fulfilled. In him are the wants of all 
nations met. In his own day he was the promised Jewish 
Messiah. In our day he is still the sufficient Redeemer. 
Between him and Moses there was strict historic analogy. 
The Hebrew lawgiver was the type of the later Saviour. 
He existed in the thought of God before all worlds, but 
his actual life began when he was born in Bethlehem of 
Judea. His eternal Being is of the future rather than of 
the past, and that all men shall share with him. He saves 
men from their sins by his death and by his life ; by his 
word and by his example ; by his influence upon their 
hearts and wills, and not by any change in the plans of 
God. He takes away the sins of men, not forensically, 
according to a scheme, but actually, with no deception, not 
by taking upon himself all at once their penalty, but by re- 
moving their substance, not in the way of an atonement to 
God, but of a reconciliation of man. 

This view of Christ and his mission Socinus very fully 
illustrates. His logic binds in an iron chain the testimonies 
of Scripture, which defend it. He explains frankly, with- 
out explaining away those passages of Scripture which 
men have brought into the defence of opposite views, and 
shows how they harmonize with his view. He will take 
what St. John says about the Word in the beginning, the 
Word with God and the Word made flesh, and show that 
the common use of language among the Hebrews allowed 
such description of a created being. He shows us St. Paul 
confessing the doctrine of the Unity, and writing, too, in 



THE SOCINI. 363 



the style of the Psalmist, about gods of inferior honor. 
" For although there be who are called gods, whether in 
heaven or earth, as there are gods many and lords many, 
yet to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are 
all things." He brings readily the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
so long the unfailing arsenal of the Trinitarian party, into 
clear confirmation of the opposite view, and proves that 
the powers ascribed there to Christ are derived and not 
original. He quotes the words of Christ in his conversa- 
tions with friends, and his replies to foes, in his formal 
discourse, and his occasional parable, in what he said 
to Pharisees seeking to entice him to blaspheme, and 
what he said to the young ruler asking the way of salva- 
tion — in what he claimed of himself, and what he refused 
of himself ; his words at the well with the woman, at the 
table with his brethren, and on the cross with the multitude 
around him, to prove by accumulation of evidence and 
by the irresistible weight of earnest sincerity, that the 
power of Christ was delegated power ; that his help came 
from a higher source, and that the most honorable epithet 
due to him was the epithet that the apostles, the multitude 
and the Roman soldiers gave him. the " Son of God." 

Socinus is very careful that none shall accuse him of 
degrading the work of Christ by denying Christ's share in 
the Godhead. He is never weary of discoursing upon the 
lofty perfections and the sweet influences of Christ's char- 
acter, and to no believer could grace and redemption be 
more sweet and charming themes. He shows how a just 
regard to the influence of Christ's gospel upon the sinners' 
heart renders needless the scheme of a sacrificial atone- 
ment ; how if sin can be purged away by the imitation of 
Christ its punishment may be justly remitted. To him 
forgiveness is a word of great meaning and power ; and 
repentance, the word which John and Jesus so often used, 
which the apostles were commanded to preach as the pre- 
liminary step to the inheritance of God's kingdom, joined 
to the rite of purification and the feast of communion, 
their words forgiveness and repentance were far holier 
than the word atonement, which neither Jesus nor his 
companions ever used. He would not, by unduly exalting 
the death of Christ, depreciate his pure and blameless 



364 THE SO C IN I. 



life, or have men forget that the last great martyrdom was 
but the noble close of long months of heroic service to 
men. He could not rest upon the small passage of Cal- 
vary, with all its physical marvel and moral grandeur, as 
containing the whole of redemption. He looked at the 
life which went before, and at the glory which came after ; 
at the meek, long-suffering and loving missionary, who 
went teaching and preaching, healing and restoring from 
city to city, and at the risen and ascended Lord, exercising 
still from on high sovereignty in his church. And he en- 
couraged prayer to Christ for spiritual blessings and for a 
place in the kingdom of the Redeemed. He could not 
seal the work of Christ forever by the clotted blood from 
his veins, but saw him reigning on High and interceding 
for sinners with the Father. 

In this view of Christ lay the chief of Socinus's here- 
sies. But they reckoned also as unsound his view of the 
nature of man and the origin of sin. He did not count 
physical death as the worst of calamities, or refer this to 
sin as a necessary consequence. Man, he believed, was 
naturally mortal, created in the beginning with a frame 
subject to decay, and set under a law of death as absolute 
as the law of life. The death which sin brought into the 
world was spiritual, a loss of the soul's immortality, joy 
and hope. To restore this Christ came. To bring im- 
mortal life to light he ministered to man. To awaken the 
dormant capacity of holiness and develop the power of 
life in every soul ; to sanctify the earlier revelations, and 
fulfill, by the disclosure of heaven, the longings of the 
heart after a rest not of earth ; to renew the balance of 
spiritual forces, and make man not what he was in the be- 
ginning, so much as what he was meant to be in the end; 
this was the thought of Socinus concerning Christ's reli- 
gion in the soul. He denied alike the original righteous- 
ness and the original sin of man, asserting only the 
original possibility of both virtue and sin. Sin began 
with Adam when wrong was first committed, and it so 
begins with every man. The reproach of conscience is 
its proper witness. Virtue begins when man refuses 
temptation, and sensible of his freedom, rejects those 
things which the word of God, in Scripture or in reason, 



THE SOCINI. 365 



tells him is wrong. A man cannot be guilty for his father's 
transgression, neither will a just God hold him responsible 
for sins which he has never wilfully committed. He is not 
to blame for the infirmities of his spirit more than for the 
weakness of his bodily frame. His sin is a result of per- 
sonal choice and not of natural pravity. His righteous- 
ness is his own and his guilt is his own to every man. 

Socinus followed Pelagius in his view of the freedom of 
the will. He anticipated Arminius in his view of the 
grace of Christ. He would not have any man claim sal- 
vation for his own good works, but it was even more 
abhorrent to his soul that any should claim salvation 
through the bare merits of Christ, without their own per- 
sonal obedience. He taught that a virtuous life is the 
proper evidence of faith, and that the life acceptable to 
God is one in which the love and good works of Jesus are 
repeated. His views of practical duty, too, were in har- 
mony with this theory. The punishment of death seemed 
to him barbarous in principle and of doubtful utility. 
Aggressive warfare was a monstrous perversion of justice 
and love. He would not have men do evil for the sake of 
possible good, or violate God's laws in the pretence of serv- 
ing him. The use of deadly weapons, except for purposes of 
self defense, he held to "be contrary to the Christian spirit. 
All luxury and vain show, all avarice and sordid lust of 
gain, all uncleanness, whether of person, word or thought, 
was a hindrance in his view, to the Gospel in the heart. If 
he prized the rite of baptism less as an ordinance, he 
prized it more as a symbol. As applied to infants it 
seemed to him but a form. But as received by the mature 
man, it fitly presented the proper purification of the spirit. 
The Lord's Supper was to him not a mystical feast, but a 
fraternal commemoration of the Saviour's dying love. 

One word may be added on the idea of the church 
which Socinus gave. "The church," he says, "is either 
visible or invisible. The visible church is an assembly of 
men, who hold and profess so much of the true religion of 
Christ as is necessary to salvation. The invisible church 
is an assembly of men who have a genuine and justifying 
faith in Christ, and who are scattered over the world. The 
visible church may be considered as one body, because it 



3^6 THE SOCINL 



comprehends all the particular churches or assemblies of 
those who profess the Christian doctrine of salvation as 
its members. Any single society, and so any, as it were, 
single member of the body we have spoken of, belonging 
to the universal church, may be deemed and called a 
church, which distinction does not hold with respect to the 
invisible church. 

In regard to the ministry, Socinus taught that its author- 
ity came not from a transmitted virtue, but from the free 
choice of the people. The pastor of every congregation 
should be one whom they have selected from his superior 
wisdom and piety to explain to them the sacred word and 
to show them the issues of their sin. His power with the 
people was the power of the truth which he preached, and he 
had no right to compel any to assent to his opinion. All 
action within the church should be done by the votes of its 
members, and none should be hindered from the free ex- 
pression of his views. The people might admonish the 
minister, if they saw anything in his character or conduct 
inconsistent with his office. The system of Socinus was 
what we call Congregational ; and w T e live under a form of 
church discipline and order which he proved to be Scrip- 
tural and rational, just alike to the minister and people, 
and consistent with the Saviour's word. 

Such was the scheme of doctrine embodied in the cate- 
chism of the Unitarian Church of Poland, and compiled 
from the writings of Socinus, and published in the year 
1609. It was dedicated to James I. of England, and 
found soon many adherents in the English realm. In 
eleven sections it treats of the great doctrines and duties 
of the Gospel, and its conciseness, its perspicuity, its hu- 
mane and generous spirit, its comprehensive morality, and 
its genuine piety, have extorted for it the admiration of 
the most orthodox historians. It has always been the 
pride of the Socinian chuches, and after centuries of per- 
secution, which they have passed in defending it, they may 
be pardoned in regarding it to-day as hardly less than in- 
spired. Few of the more famous doctors of the church 
have left such a monument of their genius and faith. We 
here may justly prize the early testimony to what we believe 
is to be at some time the faith of the universal church. 



THE SOCINI. 3 6 7 



The fame of Socinus rests not on the short story of his 
life, but on this better creed than the creeds of the coun- 
cils. From his sound beginning the great order of the 
ages has yet to grow. 

It does not fall within my plan here to tell the hard for- 
tunes of the Socinian party — what injuries they bore, 
what changes came Over their fraternities. No sadder 
chapter in the history of religion is written ; but it belongs 
to a later age. Socinus left at his death a strong and 
hopeful party. And his early followers so shared his 
spirit that an English archbishop could say of them, when 
half a century had passed, that they were the strongest 
managers of a weak cause, and were in heart and head 
above the doctors of every communion. 



368 THE PURITANS OF ENGLAND. 



XV. 

THE PURITANS OF ENGLAND. 

" So absolute, indeed, was the authority of the crown, 
that the precious spark of Liberty had been kindled and 
was preserved by the Puritans alone ; and it was to this 
sect, whose principles appear so frivolous, and habits so 
ridiculous, that the English owe the whole freedom of 
their constitution." Such is the testimony which the 
philosophic historian of England, who hated the manners 
and despised the dogmas of the Puritan fanatics, is con- 
strained to bear to their influence in the age of Elizabeth. 
Hume would gladly have avoided, if he might, an admis- 
sion so troublesome to his favorite skepticism. But no 
prejudice could cover for him the great fact which the 
succeeding centuries have only continued to interpret on 
both sides of the ocean, that these contemptible Puritans 
have been the chief architects of civil and religious free- 
dom. The spirit of individual right, which they fixed for- 
ever in the statutes of the English realm, gave to the 
philosopher the chance to publish unmolested his infidel 
opinions, and substituted the grave answers of respectful 
arguments for the rack and the fire by which skepticism 
like his in an earlier day would have been speedily si- 
lenced. It is to the very men, whose grotesque exterior 
and whose blind enthusiasm are matter for satire to the 
wits and scholars of the eighteenth century, that these owe 
their freedom to laugh at things sacred, and to set before 
the world their sophisms and their blasphemies. 

No candid writer to-day, whatever his estimate of the 
character or the theology of the Puritans, will venture to 
deny the statement of Hume, made more than half a cen- 
tury ago. Indeed, in these last days, men of all parties 
vie with each other in extolling the people whose name in 



THE PUBITANS OF ENGLAND. 3 6 9 

their own day was a synonym with the learned for narrow 
bigotry, and with the refined for disgusting cant. The 
American Anglo-Catholic even, in whom mental hallucina- 
tion in this day seems to reach its extreme, saves his talk 
about the English Rebellion and Archbishop Laud from 
perfect imbecility by admitting that the Puritans loved 
liberty and established it. Even the crazy Romanist of 
New England apologizes for the hard words which his sys- 
tem compels him to say about the sect which produced 
such men as Cartwright, Pym, Hampden and Winthrop, 
and keeps pride in his lineage, though he Jiates the faith 
which his ancestors prized. A reactionary criticism, in- 
deed, delights just now to fasten upon the weak points of 
the Puritan character; and men who have not manliness 
enough to understand its self-sacrifice will enlarge upon 
its harshness, its tyranny and its hatred of beauty. The 
class of amateur Christians, to whom groined arches, and 
costly pews, and luxurious music, and a sweet-voiced, 
fashionable preacher make the substance of religion, are 
given now to thank God that the Puritan Church exists 
no longer, and that those grim sectarians are all in their 
graves. The worshippers of Pagan art who go mad before 
an undraped statue, wonder how men existed in the days 
when truth and law was so much more than beauty. It is 
quite common now to hear beardless youths, whose infor- 
mation on the Puritans is derived from the vivacious pages 
of the lighter magazines — a class of works into the secret 
of which the soul of no Puritan could ever come — passing 
severe judgment upon the men who have left Old and New 
England what they are to-day. But when candor, and 
learning, and philosophy, and genius and piety to-day 
speak about the Puritans, they magnify this name. The 
ringing sentences of Macaulay, which thrill every school- 
boy as he reads, summon for us the array of praying war- 
riors, with their sad, determined constancy, and their 
terrible faith in God. The quaint sharpness of Carlyle's 
tangled style shows us in clear outline from the Puritan 
stock the genuine heroic profile. The swelling periods of 
our native historian, Bancroft, rise to the dignity of elo- 
quence when his filial reverence turns to describe the vir- 
tues and glory of his fathers. Even the French Stoic, 
24 



37° THE PURITANS OF ENGLAND. 

calm in his praises of the liberals and the zealots of his 
own brilliant nation, chooses for his warmest eulogy the 
Calvinists of England and the statesmen of the Common- 
wealth ; and Guizot has said what Mackintosh was always 
hoping to say. The scholarship of New England has 
widely departed from the creed of the Puritans. The 
style of life and the style of thought for which they suf- 
fered and fought has become curious, almost obsolete in 
its chief features in the land which they colonized. Their 
descendants worship now to the sound of organs and in 
the sight of colors, and dread the tedious sermons to which 
they thronged' with delight. The sports which they pro- 
scribed are commended now, and the Sunday which we 
keep is not the Sabbath which they sanctified. Yet the 
scholars and preachers of this land are loyal to their her- 
itage, love to renew the memory of their Pilgrim fathers, 
and describe still in sermon and song the worth which 
they have learned from childhood to honor. When the 
anniversary of their winter landing returns, in what affec- 
tionate fervor their tale is repeated, and the proud fulfil- 
ment of their hope contrasted with the pains which they 
bore. I have read a glowing tribute to their memory from 
a descendant on the Pacific shores, where thirty years ago 
there was an unbroken wilderness. 

The materials for a just estimate of the character and 
influence of the Puritans are ample. From every point of 
view they have been criticised, and have passed the ordeal 
alike of party brand, of sectarian, of literary and of aesthetic 
judgment. The high tory and the flaming radical, the 
Romanist, the churchman, and the dissenter of many de- 
grees, the lyceum lecturer and the college professor, have 
taken care to make the world familiar with these singular 
men. The relics of their industry in every department 
are abundant. The tomes of their theology still lend 
weight to the libraries of divines, and many ministers still 
delight in the solid thoughts of Baxter and Owen, of Chav- 
nock and Howe. The epic of their great poet is one of 
the world's classics ; no library is complete without the 
Paradise Lost; and no student has learned of what the 
composite English tongue is capable, unless he has spoken 
the grand sentences, Saxon in their nerve and classic in 



THE PURITANS OF ENGLAND. 371 

their roundness, of the prose works of John Milton. Who 
has not followed the pilgrim's progress as the Puritan 
Bunyan has marked it? What figure stands out more 
clear before us from history than the figure of Cromwell, 
the plebeian ruler, whom Nature made for a despot, but 
whose religion so tempered his ambition that he stays in 
perpetual contrast with the upstart tyrant of France. And 
whose words of cheer and prophecy are uttered so often, 
the blazon of progress and faith, as those noble parting 
words of the Leyden pastor, " I am verily persuaded that 
the Lord has more truth yet to break out from His holy 
word." Truly, the educated child of New England parent- 
age may write from his memory alone about the Puritans 
and not write amiss. If he mistake about these men, it 
must be through wilful blindness. 

It would be a needless rashness, therefore, in me, to at- 
tempt here an original estimate of the Puritan character, 
or to trace the issues of their movement in the free insti- 
tutions of England and America, when the most popular 
English historians of both hemispheres have done this so 
brilliantly. I shall go back to the origin of the Puritan 
sect, and dwell upon the causes of the movement and its 
earlier developments, and leave aside the tempting pas- 
sages of the Commonwealth and the civil wars, in which 
Puritanism proved itself in parliament and the field, bran- 
dished its secular weapons, and wore its invincible armor. 
The pictures of its early fortunes and sorrows have, per- 
haps, a feebler coloring, and we cannot eliminate from 
them such striking portraits. The names of which Puri- 
tanism makes boast come chiefly in the later reigns of 
Charles and his successors. But there is enough in the 
martyr period of the sect to attract our thoughtful regard. 
The persecuted preachers of Elizabeth's reign were the 
worthy precursors of the statesmen of the Commonwealth. 
Cartwright was not unworthy to be forerunner to Milton. 

The name Puritans was not new in its application to a 
party in the English Church. In the third century after 
Christ, the word Cathari, or pure, had been applied to a 
sect which denied the need of many ceremonies or much 
display in the administration of worship. In the year 
1564, it began to be used by a similar portion of the sub- 



37 2 THE PURITANS OF ENGLAND. 

jects of Elizabeth. The Reformation of the English 
Church had now reached a point when all danger of a 
return to Rome seemed to be over. The atrocities of 
Mary's rule had confirmed the Protestant spirit of the na- 
tion, and with the expiring Smithfield fires fell the last hope 
of regaining England to the authority of ultramontane 
rule. The exiles of faith, returning from their continental 
homes, brought with them an aversion to Popish rites and 
practices which they would fain settle into law. They 
hoped great things from the known firmness and the Prot- 
estant education of the new queen. The daughter of Anne 
Boleyn could never forgive the power which had slan- 
dered her mother, and could never imitate the acts of that 
sister whose unlawful supremacy had postponed her own 
royal accession. But it was soon found that little favor 
to religion was to be looked for from the cold-hearted, 
self-willed, violent heir to the temper of Henry VIII. 
Elizabeth was a Protestant indeed, so far as hatred to 
Rome went, but not in loving the ritual or principles of 
the Protestants. She had no idea of encouraging freedom 
of will or freedom of thought among her subjects. She 
dreaded the intrusion of ideas which might conflict with 
her prerogative. Fond of display, she coveted the splen- 
did apparatus of the Catholic service to add to the dig- 
nity of her religious supremacy. The doctrines of the 
ancient Church she had not renounced. The sacrifice of 
the mass she pretended still to believe in, and authorized 
the sign of the cross in her chapels. She wanted prelates 
to discipline the church to her use and will, and hated 
preachers who felt a motion to declare the word of God. 
Everything which might keep and establish the majestic 
order of the old hierarchy she favored. Everything which 
tended to simplify religion, or awaken idea in the place of 
form, she obstinately resisted. Neither the sagacity of her 
counsellors nor the entreaties of her bishops could soften 
her arrogant resolve. Heresy was to her less malignant 
than schism ; she could pardon unsoundness in faith bet- 
ter than uneasiness in service. At the beginning of her 
reign, she found it difficult to force the English prelates 
into conformity with her views. But when her determina- 
tion became manifest, the reluctant loyalty of these men 



THE PURITANS OF ENGLAND. 373 

consented, and they became partners in a persecution 
which they had learned before to abhor. Two parties 
greeted her accession. The one was the English party 
proper, who had taken pride in their exile in holding to 
all the customs and institutions of their native land, and 
had refused in Frankfort and Geneva to identify them- 
selves with the system of foreigners ; who wished to show 
that they were loyal, though afflicted, and did not change 
their hearts, though they might change their sky. The 
other party was the Puritan party, who counted the re- 
form unfinished in their own land, and gladly availed 
themselves of the chance of exile to study the creeds and 
the system of the foreign reformers. These remembered 
the noble refusal of the martyred Hooper to wear at his 
consecration the robes of a superstitious church. They 
had treasured up the arguments of those doctors who had 
declared in the reigns of Edward and Mary that a half 
reform was contemptible, and that compromise with Anti- 
christ was an insult to God, and had suffered for their 
bold avowal. The middle way. of the more moderate 
party seemed to them at once mean and dangerous, lack- 
ing the first principle of all true protest. They found in 
Geneva the model of a rational and scriptural church in 
which freedom and order existed side by side, and moral 
purity was the crown of their union. Fierce disputes arose 
between these parties even in the time of their exile. The 
encroaching zeal of the Puritans did not conciliate their 
adversaries. Their doctrinal unity only made their an- 
tipathy of system worse, as family quarrels are worse than 
all other ; and they brought back to England a rooted 
jealousy. It became soon evident that the adhesion of 
the queen to the principles of the Church party proper 
would not be meekly assented to. If the Puritans were 
not formidable by numbers, they were well officered by 
men of learning, and they had on their side a trenchant 
and ready logic, and a terrible earnestness. Their preach- 
ers were men of the people, and the bishops knew enough 
of the English people to feel that there was danger in 
irritating too far the masters of the popular mind. The 
wiser among them advised concession and objected to any 
process which should force recusants to violate their con- 



374 THE PURITANS OF ENGLAND. 

sciences in their submission to external forms. But Eliza- 
beth was not to be reasoned with. She asked not advis- 
ers, but only instruments of her will and pleasure. 

On the twenty-fourth of June, 1559, the famous act of 
uniformity became a law throughout the English realm.. 
By this act, all ministers were required to conform in dis- 
cipline and in ritual to the canons of the Church as laid 
down in the prayer-book of King Edward, under severe 
penalties. The first opponents were of the Catholic party, 
and all the bishops but one of Queen Mary's reign refused 
to sign, and left their offices. Twelve months passed be- 
fore men could be found to accept the vacant places in 
sufficient numbers to consecrate the new archbishop. And 
when Matthew Parker was solemnly ordained to the prima- 
cy, the absence w 7 as noted of many of the ceremonies and 
vestures which usually accompanied that service. The 
new archbishop executed most unwillingly at first the 
rigorous provisions of the new act. He felt at every step 
that he was strengthening public opinion against the 
Church. And though he had a heart not averse to perse- 
cution, and was not troubled by any compassionate feel- 
ings for the sufferers, he tried every expedient to evade 
the impolitic service which the instances of his royal mis- 
tress pressed upon him. The fifteen years of his ecclesi- 
astic rule were, on the whole, more favorable to the growth 
of the Puritan sect than might have been expected from 
his habits and character. There were instances of cru- 
elty, indeed, and burnings at the stake on trifling pre- 
texts. Some were exiled. Some were imprisoned. Many 
were deprived of their livings. They were insulted by the 
mockery of trials. Their arguments were answered by 
sneers and their plea of conscience was laughed at. Some 
conformed, with mental reservations, as many do in sign- 
ing the creeds to-day. But a large body, who go by the 
name in history of non-conformists, utterly refused. 

It is proper to state the grounds of the non-conformists, 
that we may know exactly what it was which separated 
our Puritan fathers from the national Church. In doctrine 
they did not differ substantially from the dominant body. 
The Arminian theory had not yet been adopted into the 
English liturgy, and the peculiar views of the Romish 



THE PURITANS OF ENGLAND. 375 

Church had been dropped from the creed. It was heresy 
to teach the "real presence," and John Knox found sym- 
pathy among English prelates for his ultra-Calvinistic 
views. Doctrinally, the Church of Elizabeth, and of those 
who protested, were one. But the general objections of 
the Puritans to the Church were summed under nine 
general heads. 

First — They denied that the bishop had any superior 
right over his brethren in the ministry, or any title to lord- 
ship in the state, and protested against the supremacy and 
the worldliness of the Episcopal class. Second — They 
held that the subordinate offices of deans, archdeacons, 
etc., in which the Church abounded, were unlawful and 
unscriptural. Third — They declared that the bishop had 
no right of excommunication or punishment, no right to 
depose, fine or imprison men by virtue of his office, and 
contended that such acts belonged exclusively to the secu- 
lar power. Fourth — They denied that the bishop had any 
right to admit members to the Church on his own respon- 
sibility, and contended that it was the duty of the brethren 
of the Church to decide upon the fitness of members 
Fifth — To many parts of the liturgy they took serious ex- 
ception, especially to parts of the marriage and burial ser- 
vice, and to the frequent responses, which they considered 
unmeaning and impertinent. The apocryphal books they 
rejected. Sixth — They insisted that preaching was the 
most important part of public worship. A man might 
pray in private, but he went to church to hear the word of 
God explained. They opposed, therefore, all sinecures in 
the Church, all mere reading of a set written form. Sev- 
enth — They repudiated the whole system of church festivals 
and fasts as savoring of Popery, and unwarranted by Scrip- 
ture, would not keep saint-days, Easter. Christmas or Lent, 
but insisted that the Sunday was the Christian sabbath, to 
be kept with the strictest holiness. Eighth — They vehe- 
mently opposed the profane pomp of worship, as they 
deemed it, especially in chanting the prayers and in the 
use of musical instruments, and argued that they were the 
late innovations of luxury upon worship. Their ninth ob- 
jection, apparently most trivial of all, was in reality most 
influential and grave. It pointed out numerous particu- 



376 THE PURITANS OF ENGLAND. 

lars in the rubric which savored of superstition, and justi- 
fied false views of Christian duty. There was the sign of 
the cross in baptism, of which they doubted the sense ; 
there was the bow at the name of Jesus, which seemed to 
them to imply that Jesus was greater than God, that the 
Son was more worthy of honor than the Father ; there was 
the change of raiment during service, as if prayer de- 
rived sanctity from the dress of the priest, or could not be 
offered as truly in a black gown as a white one, as if sim- 
plicity were not more acceptable to God than show ; there 
was the whole formula of marriage, and especially its ring, 
which seemed to them worse than folly, since it favored 
the idea that marriage was a sacrament, instead of a civil 
contract; there was the kneeling to receive the Lord's Sup- 
per, a posture hostile to the idea of a feast of communion, 
and tending to show a humility before men rather than God ; 
there was the folly of godfathers and godmothers stand- 
ing sponsors for children in whom they had no natural 
right, and hindering the proper obligation of parents ; 
all these and more abuses were denounced by the Puritans 
as needless, profane and irreligious in their tendency. On 
these points they took issue with the national Church and 
insisted upon reform in each and all. For these they ar- 
gued, voted and suffered. They preached in their churches 
against these relics of Popery, and they confessed without 
fear before the courts that to all these things they were 
hostile. 

The immediate successor of Parker in the archbishop's 
chair, Edmund Grindal, whose learning and eloquence 
had raised him to a station of which the mildness of his 
temper seemed to unfit him to exercise the authority, pur- 
sued with the Puritans the policy of conciliation ; nor could 
the threats, or even the punishments which the queen 
bestowed upon him, induce him to act the part of a perse- 
cutor. He loved the system of Calvin too well to deal 
harshly with its adherents. And though he indignantly 
repelled the accusation of being a Puritan, and pretended 
that he was a zealous friend to the Establishment, it is 
certain that many of the contumacious preachers were left 
unmolested in sowing their sedition. Their places of wor- 
ship were resorted to, to the neglect of the parish churches. 



THE PURITANS OF ENGLAND. 377 

The men and ladies of noble families went to visit them in 
prison ; and their writings were preserved and prized. 
The eight years of Grindal's primacy gave the Puritans 
abundant chances to explain and commend their doc- 
trines, and to justify before the people their contumacy in 
resisting abuses. 

But the death of this prelate, in the year 1583, changed 
at once their prospects. Dr. John Whitgift, the champion 
of the Church in the halls of debate, a man of great abil- 
ity and acuteness, but of an energy and iron will after the 
queen's own heart, was raised to the vacant see. Whit- 
gift hated the Puritans with all the vehemence of his fiery 
nature. He remembered how Thomas Cartwright had ven- 
tured to dispute with him at Cambridge, and what the 
popular verdict was upon their reasoning. He rejoiced 
in the occasion of now venting that wrath which want of 
power for so many years had compelled him to restrain. 
He decreed that no Puritan minister should teach in the 
English land. All non-conforming ministers were sus- 
pended from their official functions. They went out into 
the fields and woods, but it was declared a crime to hear 
them there. It became dangerous for the nobles to har- 
bor Puritans in their houses. The haughty sovereign 
commended her archbishop, and though her civil minis- 
ters remonstrated and pointed out the sure disaster of 
alienating so large a portion of intelligent and influential 
men, she justified the establishment of a Court of High 
Commission, whose business it should be to hunt out and 
punish Puritans. Many thought of the Inquisition, and 
some dared to say — even privy counsellors to her Majesty 
— that it was only the introduction to England, under an- 
other name, of that infamous tribunal. But it was de- 
creed, and it pursued with vigor its fatal work. It sent 
spies into the houses even of faithful churchmen, and dif- 
fused everywhere fear, distrust and indignation. The 
result was what might have been foreseen. The con- 
sciences of men could not be forced. And the zeal of the 
Puritans took on the darker fire of a sullen vengeance. 

In the beginning the Puritans were far from wishing to 
be schismatics, or to break their connection with the 
Church in their land. They would gladly have retained 



37^ THE PURITANS OF ENGLAND. 

its offices, and they were true Englishmen in their unwil- 
lingness to rebel. They wanted to reform the Church, 
not to break from it. They wanted to purify the altar 
already built, not to build a rival altar. But now oppres- 
sion drove them to more radical thoughts. Was it need- 
ful to bear any longer with that which so cruelly cast them 
out? Was that a true Church of Christ which kept so 
many of the features of the false Church at Rome ? 
Should they try any farther to redeem what God had 
evidently maddened to its own destruction ? The Bible, 
newly translated, helped the Puritans to decide their 
course. They compared the Church of Elizabeth with 
the model of that hierarchy which God, through Moses, 
founded, and saw how widely it lacked the old Hebrew 
strength, simplicity and reverence. They seemed to be 
the remnant of the faithful in an idolatrous nation. And 
though loyal still to the crown, ready to fight in the armies 
of the queen and to pray against her enemies, they began to 
meditate their mission as the heralds of a new crusade. 
The time had not come for an outbreak. The day of sub- 
mission was not over. The wilderness wandering had not 
fulfilled its forty years. But the queen could not live for- 
ever. And it was permitted then to look with longing to 
the prospect of another freer rule when their childless 
tyrant should be laid with her fathers. The heir to the 
throne was nurtured in a church modelled more on the 
apostolic plan. The people of Scotland had now banished 
all prelacy from their borders, and installed the ideas and 
customs of the Church at Geneva. The encouraging word 
of Knox and Maitland came to remind them that God was 
living, and a just God would care for his own. And great 
thoughts of the future consoled them for their present 
affliction. It became their duty now in every lawful way 
to accustom men to liberal ideas of church law, and to 
prepare the way for an overthrow of the Episcopal power. 
Driven out from the churches, the Puritans claimed their 
place as citizens and statesmen in the popular branch of 
parliament. Questions of prerogative came to discussion 
at that bar, where the votes of the people fixed their rights 
and gave to the crown its supplies. There were not want- 
ing those who hinted that an outraged people might be 



THE PURITANS OF ENGLAND. 379 

constrained to resist by force what they could not conquer 
by pleading. Cartwright had declared that the enemies of 
God's Church might deserve death as well as common 
murderers. And the Saxon lineage of his followers pre- 
pared them to take the field, like Israel of old, in defense 
of their faith. The ministry, ejected from their pulpits, 
found places to speak and multitudes to listen. The spies 
of the archbishop could not frighten them from the duty 
of prophesying. " Woe is me," was their language, " if I 
preach not the counsel of God unto you." The greater 
danger only added to the vehemence. What they could 
not do so safely or so often, they did more intensely. If 
the churches could not add the associations of familiar 
worship to their meetings, they had the Bible, and carried 
it with them, and could expound from it the truths of sal- 
vation, wherever men gathered to listen. The words of the 
prophets could ring with as clear a sound, though heard 
along the highway, as within sacred walls. 

Fanatics are appointed in God's providence to go before 
every moral and religious movement, and to utter in ex- 
travagant speech its inspirations. They offend the taste 
and the prudence of those who stop to reason, but they 
declare a word which prudence and culture will take up and 
apply. It is unjust and unwise to condemn for their vio- 
lence those in whom sincerity and zeal outruns discretion. 
The Puritans had their fanatics, who became party lead- 
ers, and perilled the cause of religious freedom by their 
untimely violence. Chief among these was Robert Brown, 
who gave his name to a numerous sect, which was for a 
time confounded with the whole Puritan party. Brown 
was a young man of noble connections, a graduate of the 
Cambridge University and a clergyman of the Church. 
But his temper and his tongue were alike under weak con- 
trol. His opinions prevented him from gaining any liv- 
ing in the establishment. But in default of this, he be- 
came an itinerant missionary of the new opinions, went 
about the country haranguing against the ceremonies of 
the Church and the whole system of ordinations, bishops 
and festivals, challenging the clergy everywhere to debate 
with him, and courting their violence. He was imprisoned 
again and again, but only to boast the more when released 



380 THE PUEITANS OF ENGLAND. 

of his patience in bearing hardness and his resemblance 
here to the great Christian apostle. In 1582 he published 
a book on the Life and Manners of True Christians, in 
which he urged ministers not to wait for any official decree, 
but to take the reformation of the Church into their own 
hands. Disciples, of course, thronged around him. If his 
spirit were not quite meek and saint-like, nor his speech 
of the choicest, he would be a religious hero, who could 
tell of thirty-two prisons which he had occupied, some so 
dark that he could not see his hand at noonday. His con- 
gregation, dispersed by royal authority, fixed themselves 
at Middleburg, in one of the Dutch provinces, where for a 
few years they kept their worship and held together. But 
the character of their leader was not stable enough for a 
quiet life ; his zeal grew cold ; he went back to England, 
took orders in the Church, became a profligate, and died 
without reputation at an advanced age. But his principles 
did not fall with his apostasy. The truths which he had 
spoken took root in the hearts of many more pious and 
faithful. They appealed to the sober reason of men not 
easily deluded ; and they attracted many before John Rob- 
inson worthy to be reckoned as his companions. 

The principles of the Brownists were few and simple. 
Their model of discipline was the Church of the Apostles. 
The centre of their church union was a covenant similar 
to the New England covenants to-day, declaring the Bible 
and its ordinances the sole guide of their conduct. All 
signed this, and each new member made before his breth- 
ren profession of the essentials of his faith. The ministers 
had no power but what the people gave them. A majority 
of voices chose them and ordained their duties. There 
were pastors to administer the rites of the Church, teach- 
ers to speak its word, and elders to pray with its sick and 
succor its poor. Every man had a right to question his 
Christian guides as to their opinions, and to speak at the 
proper time and place any word which the spirit might 
move him. All congregations were independent. No min- 
ister had any right out of his own, even to preach, and no 
interference was allowed of any other in an act of disci- 
pline. There were no set forms of worship. The govern- 
ment was a democracy. 



THE PURITANS OF ENGLAND. 381 

Martyrdom 'sanctified the radicals' theory of this new 
body of separatists. The queen chose to construe a denial 
of her supremacy in the Church as treason against her 
state; and in spite of the protest of the Brownists that 
they were ready to die in her defense, and that they loved 
her as their lawful ruler, they were tried and condemned 
as traitors. Henry Bawawe, after Brown the most zealous 
preacher of the new views, with Greenwood, a learned and 
eminent divine, were executed at Tyburn like the vilest 
criminals. The weak denial of John Udell of the party 
whose principles he had defended, extorted by his severe 
trials, did not save him from death in a prison. The 
Brownists had a double foe to contend with — the party of 
the queen and the Puritan party proper, whose sympathies 
went with the Presbyterians of Scotland rather than with 
the Independent system. The beginning of that long 
strife now appeared which raged so fiercely in the wars of 
the next century and brought the army in to crush the 
parliament. The Puritans were more indignant with the 
Brownists, because they suffered for the bad name of these 
men. They had to bear the obloquy, as moderate reform- 
ers in all time must, of the extreme opinions of their 
party. The repudiation of an unpopular name did not 
screen them from the royal hatred. It mattered little to 
Whitgift and his brethren how far the Puritans went — 
whether to a criticism of the Church forms or a rejection 
of the whole Church system. The fault was in encourag- 
ing at all the rebellion. The archbishop and the queen 
knew but two parties — those who were for and those who 
were against them — and were as indifferent as Pilate to 
the quarrels of Puritans among themselves. It was joy 
only to find such unquestionable fanaticism as might au- 
thorize persecution. Cartwright and his brethren, who 
would do everything but acknowledge the queen's suprem- 
acy, denounced in vain from their prison the excesses of 
Hacket and his prophets ; a raving blasphemer, who called 
himself King Jesus and stirred up the people to revolu- 
tion. The moderate party failed alike with the Court and 
the people — with the Court, because all shades of schism 
were alike criminal, and with the people, because they 
seemed afraid to follow their principles to just conclusions. 



382 THE PUBITANS OF ENGL AX D. 

Nobody pitied them for their sufferings, and many despised 
them for their faintheartedness. 

In the meantime, the Puritan party made constant prog- 
ress. All the vigilance of Whitgift could not prevent the 
books of the Reformers from finding their way among the 
people. In numerous noble houses the domestic chaplain 
was a preacher of the new sect. The reformed book of 
discipline, signed at first by more than eight hundred min- 
isters, found sympathy with a much larger number. In- 
genious expedients were discovered to evade the law about 
worship. This act, one of the most arbitrary and disgrace- 
ful of Elizabeth's reign, provided that any who should 
print, write or speak words against the established wor- 
ship, or should attend any unlawful meeting, or, being 
above sixteen years of age, should fail for one month to 
hear divine service in some regular church or chapel, 
should suffer perpetual banishment. The moderates got 
along with this last provision by going to church when ser- 
vice was almost over and compromising with conscience ; 
but the Brownists would not yield, and mostly went into 
exile. 

Such was the state of things in the year 1603, when 
James of Scotland succeeded to the throne of Elizabeth. 
The number of Puritans of various parties was estimated 
at several hundred thousand, a considerable portion of 
whom adopted the extreme opinions. The Church at 
Amsterdam had become consolidated, and in other towns 
of Holland and other states of Europe the refugees gath- 
ered their communities and held their worship. The Eng- 
lish people, weary of the tyranny of their arbitrary queen, 
rejoiced at her death, and all believed that the policy of 
her successor would lie in another direction. The Pres- 
byterians relied upon his known and expressed admiration 
of their religious system. And the first greetings of his 
reign were a demand of the Puritans for a restoration of 
their rights and a repeal of the unjust statutes against 
them. Before he entered London, the great Millenary 
petition, subscribed by a thousand ministers, was put into 
his hands, in which the grievances were set forth and re- 
dress demanded. In the next year a solemn conference 
was held at Hampton Court in the presence of the king, 



THE PUBITANS OF ENGLAND. 383 

in which four leading Puritan divines sustained the cause 
of reform against all the chief prelates of the Church. 
The splendor of attire in which these prelates appeared, 
their sophistry, their entreaties and their subtle flatteries, 
contrasted with the simple, frank and bold manner of the 
Puritans, fatally wrought upon the weak mind of the mon- 
arch. His arbitrary temper could not brook any language 
which savored of freedom. His manner to the churchmen 
was as gracious as it was harsh to the Reformers. And 
when Whitgift exclaimed, in the utterance of an opinion, 
" undoubtedly your majesty speaks by the special aid of 
God's spirit," the submission of James to the will of the 
Church was complete, and the Puritans saw that there was 
nothing more to hope for. The declaration of the king 
was absolute, sharp and final. He claimed entire con- 
formity, declared that he would have no judges of his right 
or authority, and that he would harry all recusants, what- 
ever their station, out of the land. The stubborn should 
hang for it. He declared that the prayer-book should be 
the approved manual of worship, and confirmed by new 
sanctions the court of High Commission. His assump- 
tions were more confident from the pedantry with which 
they were supported. James imagined himself to be a 
profound theologian and a universal scholar. He fell into 
the common error of believing himself competent to decide 
points about which he had merely heard others talk. Edu- 
cated in the midst of the religious controversies of Scot- 
land, and wonted to the long sermons of those painful 
preachers, in which the metaphysics of most abstruse 
divinity were so skillfully dispensed, he seemed to himself 
to possess the requisites of a consummate doctor, and had 
always longed for a field where he might prove without 
hindrance the quality of his knowledge. In Scotland, he 
had been hampered by the obstinacy of the preachers, who 
knew his weakness and would not flatter it, and who made 
him a tool of their purposes. But in England he saw in 
the hierarchy a proper tool of arbitrary power, and he 
eagerly seized it. Here he could be a dictator of faith, 
and men would acknowledge the ability and the learning 
that his native land had so lightly esteemed. 

His Sacred Majesty, therefore (for that was the title 



384 THE PURITANS OF ENGLAND. 

which James assumed), began by assuring the Church of 
his favor and protection, and by increasing the penalties 
of the Puritan heresy, as he called it. Three hundred 
ministers were at once deprived of their charges, and 
Bancroft, the new archbishop, was encouraged to rival 
Whitgift in his execution of discipline. Suspicion of Pu- 
ritan sentiments became as bad as the crime itself. And 
he who could recommend to the Dutch states to burn their 
Arminian professor, proved by various examples in that 
kind that he was sincere in his advice. But the rack and 
the stake could not now hinder the fanaticism which had 
possessed the people. The strong men, driven into for- 
eign lands, were not silenced. And the king was defied to 
seal the lips which God's spirit had opened. The warning 
voice of the great Lord Bacon prophesied of danger to 
come in such summary dealing. But the great philosopher 
had learned to cringe, and James could not fear his venal 
spirit. Everything seemed to work against the Puritans 
— the influence of law, of royalty, of wealth — yet # their 
numbers increased ; their zeal waxed warmer ; their preach- 
ers discussed the di\^ne right of kings, and hope pointed 
them vaguely to a near promised land of deliverance. 
They could rejoice in the choice of Abbot as archbishop, 
whose suffrage was uniformly given for liberal and chari- 
table measures, and who, half a Puritan at heart, would 
not execute the laws to which he was compelled to assent. 
The luxurious and dissolute habits of the king offered a 
striking contrast to their stern and austere sanctity. The 
taxes under which the people groaned to supply his ex- 
travagance, were arguments in favor of a purer religion. 
They could take courage in the fact that a new translation 
of the Bible, by the king's authority, was now given to the 
people. The distant churches of Scotland and Ireland 
sent word to their suffering brethren to persevere in the 
faith. And in Leyden a notable pastor was preaching 
with vigor and success the gospel of a full religious free- 
dom. 

To John Robinson is assigned the honor of being the 
father of the Independent sect. And if his recorded words 
testify to the spirit of his teaching, the name was not un- 
justly given. In England he had been a Brownist of the 



THE PURITANS OF ENGLAND. 385 

most earnest kind, and had shared with his small congre- 
gation many perils and wanderings. But his heart was 
not naturally violent. And when, in 1610, he established 
his church in peace at Leyden, he was able to see, in com- 
paring his own church with the churches of the friendly* 
land which received him, that the difference was not very 
wide, and that a reasonable charity was better than a rigid 
separation. Adhering to the theory that each church was 
free to choose its own guides and ordain its own rules, he 
yet recognized the fraternal tie among Christians of differ- 
ent name, and welcomed to the table of his communion 
members of all Christian bodies. He would pray with the 
Arminians and invite them to preach in his stead, would 
ask their advice in troubles, and take counsel with them 
on questions of doctrine or duty. The consistent and 
beautiful life which he lived won the regard even of the 
bigoted Calvinists of Holland, and they tolerated the bold 
Englishman, who preached a creed, unlike theirs, looking 
forward for its development instead of backward for its 
sanction. Ten years in peace the congregation kept to- 
gether. But it pained the catholic heart of Robinson to 
behold the discords of his adopted land, and to see the 
brethren of a noble religious heritage neglecting the war- 
fare with Antichrist to fight about the obscurest notions of 
theology. He feared that the congregation could not 
dwell in peace much longer in a land which could deal so 
basely with the noblest of its children. 

A new world, in which England and Holland had al- 
ready planted colonies, invited them at once to a home of 
safety and a missionary achievement. They had heard 
of the fair lands of Virginia, and the noble river on which 
Hudson had sailed. Would it not be a noble work for 
them to found on this virgin soil the substantial structure 
of a true Christian Church, and anticipate prelacy on what 
might be the future seat of a mighty empire ? In the 
Dutch land, the language was uncouth, the style of living 
ungraceful, and there was nothing to give them the home 
feeling which they longed for. However kindly treated, 
they were always strangers there. They longed for a 
country which they might call their own, and hear only 
the music of their own tongue, and be free from the exile 
25 



386 THE PURITANS OF ENGLAND. 

feeling. It seemed hopeless, to wait longer for a change 
in the English state, which might give them return to the 
pleasant fields which they had left. The prince on whom 
.they had fixed their hopes, that Henry, whose generous 
word had gone forth that his first royal act should be to 
abrogate all that his father had done against the Puritans, 
and to free his realm from religious bondage, had been 
cut off prematurely, and in the hard, willful and morose 
temper of the single remaining son of James they feared 
only a more implacable ruler. 

Their resolve was taken. Agents, sent over to England, 
with some difficulty procured a grant of land in the north- 
ern portion of the Plymouth patent. A few men of capital 
were enlisted in the enterprise, one ship was bought and 
another hired, and in July of 1620, one hundred or more 
of the congregation of John Robinson set sail for the New 
World. They were of either sex and there were children 
among them. The parting at Delft Haven is one of the 
touching incidents which the gratitude of the world will 
not suffer to be forgotten. Every child to-day has in 
imagination a picture of that scene ; the noble pastor, 
John Robinson, uttering such brave words of cheer, bid- 
ding them inscribe on their covenant as its first article, 
that they be ready to receive whatever truth should be 
made known to them from the written word of God, — the 
embraces, the tears, the prayers and psalms, as parents 
and children separated, uncertain of ever meeting again, — ■ 
why need I dwell upon the household story of New Eng- 
land ? History has called that little band by the name 
of Pilgrims, repeating so, not the memories of the Chris- 
tian ages, when the feet of the devout were turned to the 
city of David's reign and Jesus' dying, and faith knelt at 
the shrine of the nations, but that elder tradition which 
showed the wanderers of God seeking, as he should guide 
them, the house of their refuge. If the new land had, to 
the Church of Robinson no legendary holiness, its very 
bleakness and desolation became beautiful, because there 
the promise rested. It was sacred, because in that barren 
field they could raise their Ebenezer, the sign of a king- 
dom which God should build and bless. 

Shall I leave the track of Puritan history to follow the 



THE PURITANS OF ENGLAND. 387 

fortunes of that little band, their hardships on the sea, 
and their hardships on the shore, the struggle with the 
elements which greeted them so roughly, and the pesti- 
lence, not more kind to them than to their savage foes, 
shall I tell of their journeys in the forest, shall I examine 
that charter of government, which, drawn up on the ocean, 
became on the land the pledge of their stability and free- 
dom, and which is held now in reverence by all who love 
God and liberty, shall I show you the custom of a New 
England home in that early day, or a New England Court, 
or a New England Church, how Allerton appointed his 
household, how Bradford governed, or how Brewster 
preached and prayed ; or need I describe to you the later 
rise of the larger Colony of Massachusetts, when the hun- 
ted Puritans came, not by hundreds but by thousands, 
and the pupils of Oxford and Cambridge, with their wives 
of gentle blood, gladly exchanged their hopes of prefer- 
ment and the turmoils in the land of their birth, for peace 
and security as the pioneers of their faith had found it ; 
or mark for you the character of that company, the ances- 
tors of patrician races, Winthrop and Endicott, born to be 
magistrates, and Cotton and Higginson, in whose numer- 
ous descendants the religious constancy and the large 
genius of their honorable line is still manifest ? 

We leave, therefore, the Puritans of New England, 
whose fortunes and character it is a shame for any intelli- 
gent child whose school-days have far advanced not to 
know by heart, to take a parting view of that larger body 
of which the colonies of New England were but a slender 
offshoot. We go back to the fatherland, where, during 
the settlements on these shores, the Puritan elements have 
been working to fearful issues. We pass over fifty years 
of English history, and take our stand in the middle of the 
seventeenth century. Puritanism has now reached the 
apex of its power. It has gone steadily upward, battling 
with royal prerogative, asserting popular rights, striking 
down tyranny in its outworks, surrounding it with deter- 
mined rebellion, till at last it has voted in solemn session 
that no right divine doth hedge a king, and has brought 
in the face of the princes of Europe, the descendant of 
fifty monarchs to the traitors' block, it has numbered 



388 THE PURITANS OF ENGLAND. 

among its orators such men as Pym and Hampden, and 
Sidney and Vane — models to-day and forever of the for- 
ensic orator and the ardent patriot, it has proved the 
true alliance of Church and State in the principles of free- 
dom and the recognition of human rights on which both 
rest, and torn asunder the false alliance of form and statute ; 
it has organized armies more than a match for veteran loy- 
alty, and shifted its field of conflict from the halls of Par- 
liament to the red fields of Marston Moor, Naseby and Wor- 
cester; its keen diplomacy has become dangerous abroad, 
and its words of menace at home the signal of triumph. It 
has Cromwell now to lead its invincible hosts, and Milton 
to defend its acts of daring. It has turned upon the 
primate of the Church his work of tyranny, stripped him 
one by one of all his ecclesiastic robes, tortured him with 
the mockery of an almost endless trial, and consigned him 
at last to the doom of the vilest criminal. The great ene- 
mies of God's people are vanquished, and Laud has shared 
the fate of Strafford. The great University of Oxford, the 
bulwark of the ancient church, has passed to its control, 
and the painful preachers take the place of the exiled 
heads of the schools, and compel the students to listen to 
their long expositions of the word of God. In the cathedral 
pulpits, Presbyterian divines now dispense the metaphysics 
of Calvin and denounce the idolatrous pomp which before 
marked worship there. The great assembly of divines has 
met at Westminster and passed upon the form and dis- 
cipline of a true Church of Christ ; has composed larger 
and smaller manuals of faith, to remain forever as cate- 
chisms for the believers, and has decreed that the Protest- 
antism of England shall lie in its soundness of faith more 
than its gorgeousness of ritual. Fanatics of a new stamp 
have arisen, who proclaim the Puritans of England to be 
the first artificers of the new and final monarch of God, 
and add the English Republic as fifth to the empires of 
Assyria, of Persia, of Greece and Rome. Millenaries pro- 
claim in the ranks of the army that the acceptable year of 
the Lord is at hand, and Separatists call upon the ignorant 
to hear the inspiration and come out from the ministry of 
those whom knowledge hath puffed up. The catalogue of 
heretical sects proscribed by parliament is already a long 






THE PURITANS OF ENGLAND. 389 

one, in doctrines from the Arminians to the Skeptics, in 
discipline from the Antinomians to the Familists and 
Ranters. The land is full of pamphlets which hot brains 
have forged and busy hands are scattering. The leisure 
of the camp and the peace of the Lord's Day are disturbed 
by the jangling of controversy. The most abstruse questions 
mingle with the most practical debates, and the speech of 
Scripture makes the burden of forensic eloquence and 
martial dispatches. In the ranks of the armies the Hebrew 
names have nearly supplanted those of the ancient Saxon 
day, and the fiercest bear strangely the titles of some 
milder christian virtues. A new style of morality has 
come in, and the profane sports of monarchy are made by 
statute unlawful. The wearing of hair, the attendance on 
spectacles, the indulgence in dancing and music, the keep- 
ing of the Sabbath, are all cared for by statute, and woe 
now to any offender. Gravity, sobriety and the fear of 
God have cast out the implements of divided worship. 
The revenues of the Episcopal office are sequestered to 
the needs of the troops or the services of the tabernacles, 
and pictures no longer adorn the walls of the ancient 
churches. The Bible has survived alone the iconoclasm. 
The cross reminds worshippers no longer of the Calvary, 
and even from Lambeth Chapel, where archbishops for 
many centuries had knelt to the solemn chanting, the 
organ is taken away. The Sabbath evening stillness is 
broken even in London city only by the psalms, as one 
hears them from the window sung by the pious father 
with his children around him. Beneath all the fanaticism 
an awful seriousness reigns. There is the consciousness 
of power, but the stillness of fear, godliness Without hap- 
piness, union without love, the life of those who live on the 
volcano slope, quiet on the surface but heaving beneath 
them with its mighty forces, and folding over them the 
lurid shadow of its smoking cone. 

It is from this culminating point of Puritan history, when 
the name was dropped but the reality was intensest, that the 
novelists and historians have drawn their pictures of the sect. 
The Puritan character, as we know it, appeared then in all 
the concentration and force of its elements. Its deep, un- 
doubting, immovable faith, that sense of God's presence 



39° THE PURITANS OF ENGLAND. 

which dwarfed all fear of man ; its fiery, resolute, daring 
energy, rushing on against every obstacle and every foe ; 
its conflicts of humility and zeal, of austere sanctity and 
bitter penitence ; its rage in battle, balanced by its ear- 
nestness in prayer ; its calmness in demeanor covering a 
heart steeled against compassion ; its stern sense of jus- 
tice, bearing timid men even on to regicide ; its stoical 
firmness, caring not for the praises or the abuses of men, 
but relying only on the approving voice of God ; its indi- 
vidualism, making every man the keeper of the trust of an 
infinite soul, and its spirit of congregation, binding all the 
brethren into a church of God's elect, to whom the king- 
dom of heaven was promised — all show the finest illustra- 
tion in this period of Cromwell's power. 

No single name can be selected as giving the complete 
type of the Puritan character. But in Richard Baxter 
more than any other are the elements of that character 
found, and in finer combination. His long life of seventy- 
six years was spent throughout in service to the cause of 
pure religion. He deserved well the reproach upon his 
gravestone, that "he was the sworn enemy of kings and 
bishops and in himself the very bond of rebels." He 
loved virtue better than honor, truth better than applause, 
and God more than any man. His affectionate word was 
the mediator between the contending sects of the Puritan 
party, and yet none were more faithful than he to the 
principles of: freedom. His ever-busy pen gave testimony 
that he was at once constant to watch and earnest to per- 
suade • and one hundred and sixty-eight publications are 
the memorial of his industry, his piety and his genius. 
His Call to the Unconverted was the marvel of his own 
day in its wide influence and its rapid sale ; twenty thou- 
sand were disposed of in a single year. And even now, 
sects which have widely departed from his dark theology 
commend this tract to their disciples, and place it by the 
side of that other sweeter tract of the same author, the 
Saints' Everlasting Rest. He has given us from his own 
pen the story of his life and experience, and his reflections 
are worthy in their wisdom to stand by the side of the 
great philosopher, whose universal fame his childhood 
early learned to envy. Forced all his life into controver- 



THE PURITANS OF ENGLAND. 391 

sies of various kinds, and sustaining them with matchless 
vigor, he yet longed in his heart for peace, and learned 
with advancing days to be charitable with error. The 
pressure of calumny could not deter him from duty. The 
misunderstandings of friends could not weary him of main- 
taining their cause. He was bold before his accusers, but 
to the insolent Jeffries he returned only the answer of a 
Christian. A lover of philosophy, he sought the best 
philosophy in the teachings of the gospel. He could not 
blame the zealous for their excess, when he remembered 
that it was for the service of Christ. Yet he counselled 
no violence and praised no evil done to the glory of God. 
He was one of the Puritan saints, unyielding, uncomprom- 
ising where principle was at stake, yet humble as a little 
child when he spoke of the goodness and love of God. 
His enemies admired his learning, confessed his purity 
and dreaded his power. Cromwell felt from him the 
check of that single love of God in which worldly ambition 
could find no place, and the usurper was cautious of one 
who could refuse the emoluments and honors of a bishop's 
place. A virtual martyrdom allies him to the noble army 
who aforetime suffered for the faith, and the Puritans 
proudly compare him to that bishop of the church who 
was from the first his rival in eloquence and letters. If 
the scholarship of Jeremy Taylor was more luxuriant, and 
his fancy more quaint and various, the theology of Richard 
Baxter was more robust and his reasoning more close to 
conviction. No library is complete which does not hold 
the chief productions of both these great men. But the 
works of Taylor will be rather the joy of literary leisure, 
while the works of Baxter will be the food of the spiritual 
life. The prelate will take captive the senses by the 
charm of his genius, while the Puritan will fasten the soul 
to the power of his divine wisdom. 



392 UNITARIAN PRINCIPLES. 



XVI. 
UNITARIAN PRINCIPLES AND DOCTRINES. 

" Who art thou that judgest another man's servant ? To his own 
master he standeth or falleth. Let every man be fully persuaded in 
his own mind." — Romans xiv. 4, 5. 

These words of Paul to the Romans are suitable to 
preface a statement of the principles and doctrines of the 
Unitarian sect of Christians. Those who deny to this sect 
the name of Christian show only their want of acquaint- 
ance with its writing and its preaching. It is very easy to 
make the charge of "infidelity" against a religious body ; 
but to intelligent minds those who make this charge only 
exhibit their own want of charity or knowledge. Men do 
not build churches, hold public worship, support ministers, 
and spend money in works which look exactly like Chris- 
tian works, and are just what other churches do which call 
themselves Christians, while all the time they are infidels 
or atheists. There are some absurdities so patent that 
they refute themselves, and bring confusion upon their 
prophets ; and to say that Unitarians, who have churches 
in America, and England, and France, and Holland, and 
Switzerland, and Germany, and Austria, and have had 
them for hundreds of years ; who pray in Christ's name, 
and sing hymns in his honor, and commend his example, 
and repeat his characteristic works, — to say that a sect 
of this kind is not " Christian," is one of the absurdities that 
would be incredible, if men were not found foolish enough 
to utter it. A similar utterance was that of those Phari- 
sees who ventured to say that Jesus could not be God's 
prophet, because he did not keep the Sabbath day in their 
fashion. More sensible men at once answered them that 
the acts of the healer, and the words of the teacher, 
proved sufficiently that he was a prophet from God. 



UNITARIAN PRINCIPLES. 393 

There were "blind leaders of the blind" in Judea eight- 
een hundred years ago, and there are blind leaders of the 
blind in our time. And there are no persons whom these 
words of Jesus more accurately describe than those who 
deny the Christian name to a religious body of whose ideas 
and principles they are ignorant, which they take no pains 
to know, and who only care to foster the illusion of those 
who know as little of it as themselves. Paul has words of 
this class of men, too, in that first letter of his to Timothy, 
where he speaks of persons "desiring to be teachers of the 
law : understanding neither what they say, nor whereof 
they affirm." 

There is no need of refuting a charge which refutes it- 
self to a thoughtful mind from the facts which cannot be 
denied. But a simple statement of Unitarian principles 
and doctrines, which might be made throughout from the 
very words of Jesus, may show more clearly the folly of 
the charge so loosely brought. We separate the princi- 
ples from the doctrines, since the first are the working 
force of a religious body, the second only its temporary, 
possibly its shifting, opinions. Every church must be 
judged by its principles, by its ideas, by the ideas which 
move it and give it power. Now, no church has principles 
more distinctly defined, more universally admitted, than 
the Unitarian Church. The Episcopal, or Presbyterian, 
or Baptist, or Methodist bodies cannot be surer of their 
ideas than the Unitarian. There are certain principles, 
on which all our churches, all our ministers, all our men 
and women, communicants and non-communicants, what- 
ever their different notions about one or another dogma; — 
certain principles, upon which all are agreed, which all in 
our body recognize and magnify. 

i. The first of these principles is the grand Protestant 
principle of the right of private judgment. We hold to this 
in the fullest extent. We say that every man has a right 
to form his creed for himself, from his own investigation, 
thought, and conviction, and that no one has a right to 
hamper him in the process of finding this, or to dictate 
to him by authority what he shall believe ; that there 
shall be absolute and perfect freedom for all men in com- 
ing to religious truth as much as to any other truth. We 



394 UNITARIAN PRINCIPLES. 

say that no councils, no synods, no catechisms, no fathers 
of the church, no doctors of the church, no preachers, no 
editors, whether of the ancient time or the present time, 
have a right to lord it over the souls of men, or to say 
what they must or must not believe. Every man must 
settle that for himself. Catechisms, councils, wise men, 
may help him in his decision, but cannot decide for him 
beforehand. This is a principle which every Unitarian 
Church in this country or in Europe maintains with all 
positiveness, and from which no temptation could draw it 
away. Every Unitarian asserts the right of every man to 
think for himself in coming to his saving belief. 

2. A second principle of the Unitarian Church is, that 
no one can be required or expected to believe what is co?i- 
trary to reason, or what seems to be so ; that reason is the 
arbiter of truth, and that all truth is to be tested by rea- 
son. Unitarians hold that reason was given to man as his 
light and his guide, that this is the " logos " of which John 
speaks, and that the only faith which is good for anything 
is that which reason accepts. All beyond this is profes- 
sion, — phrases, but not truth; of no use to any one. All 
Unitarians are rationalists in this sense, that they do not 
wish or intend to say that they believe anything which 
seems to them to be mathematically, metaphysically, or 
morally untrue, contrary to the accepted laws of science 
or of soul, — anything which is absurd to the reason, or 
revolting to the conscience. They will not believe a mathe- 
matical falsehood, or a falsehood of any kind, though it- 
may be called a mystery and pretend to be revealed by an 
angel. Every church in the body, every intelligent mem- 
ber in the body, holds to this principle, however high or 
deep their thought of God and Christ may be. We are 
all rationalists in vindicating reason as the ground of 
faith. 

3. A third principle of the Unitarian Church is, that no 
man is infallible ; that no creed can be framed that shall 
be beyond the reach of error, or that shall not be open to 
change ; that no form of words or even of ideas can set 
forth the absolute truth as it is in the mind of God. The 
wisest men make mistakes, and they make mistakes in in- 
terpreting and deciding religious truth as much as in 



UNITARIAN PRINCIPLES. 395 

interpreting or deciding any other truth. There is no 
infallible teacher, there is no infallible church, and there 
never can be. A thousand men. or a million men, agree- 
ing to say the same thing, do not make that thing true. 
A doctrine is not true because it has been repeated for a 
thousand years in thousands of churches. The Catholic 
Church is not infallible, in spite of its claim to own the 
Holy Spirit. The Protestant Church, in any branch, is 
not infallible, in spite of its claim of going by the letter of 
the Bible. There never was a saint or a prophet, since the 
Church began, who could say that he was exempt from the 
possibility of error. All Unitarians hold to their principle. 
We have no infallible standard in the word of any man, or 
in the words of any set of men. 

4. A fourth principle of the Unitarian Church is, that 
no creed can contain the whole of religion; that religion, 
religious faith, cannot possibly be summed up in the words 
of a creed. No formula, however ingeniously phrased and 
arranged, can possibly contain all that the soul believes 
and feels about man and God and the relation between 
them. Religion is broader, deeper, higher than any creed 
can possibly be. A creed may attempt to tell what faith 
is, may tell some things which we believe, but it falls short 
of expressing all our belief even now, much less all that 
we may believe hereafter. It may have five articles or 
thirty-nine articles, or a hundred articles, and still be in- 
adequate. It may be very simple or very complex, very 
clear or very obscure, and still fail to conclude all faith. 
Some Unitarians like creeds, while others do not ; but all 
agree that a creed can never be a finality, never be fixed 
for all time, and for the substance of all faith, never stand 
as the barrier to all farther religious advance. There is 
not one Unitarian, anywhere, in any Unitarian Church, 
who sums up the religion of all men, or even his own 
religion, in the words of any creed. 

5. A fifth principle of the Unitarian Church is, that there 
can be, and that there ought to be, no uniformity of religious 
faith. Differences of faith are inevitable. Men cannot 
all believe alike more than they can look alike or act 
alike. Their faith will vary with their temperament, with 
their education, with their habits of thought, with the 



39 6 UNITARIAN PRINCIPLES. 

influences around them. Some will be able to believe 
what others cannot possibly believe. Some will accept 
readily what others cannot be persuaded to accept. All 
attempt to establish one creed for the various branches of 
the church is preposterous. Sects and parties in religious 
things are as natural and as necessary as they are in secu- 
lar things. And it is just as impossible to force unanimity 
upon the major points as upon the minor points of the 
creed. All men cannot be made to see God in exactly 
the same way, or to find salvation in exactly the same way, 
more than they can be made to take precisely the same 
view of Baptism and the Sabbath. This principle of per- 
mitted and inevitable diversity of religious opinion is one 
which all Unitarians, whether of the right wing or the left 
wing, most strenuously maintain. 

6. A sixth principle of the Unitarian Church is, that 
sincere faith is the only true faith ; that a mere form of 
words or phrases does not express a man's faith, unless he 
knows what he is saying. A man's creed is not what he 
utters with the lips, but what he utters with the mind and 
heart ; not what he repeats following the dictation of a 
priest, but what he repeats out of the motion of his own 
soul. His real belief is not his professed belief, but his 
honest belief, be this much or little, be this identical with 
or different from, his professed belief. Everything which 
one adds to his honest conviction is superfluous, however 
it may coincide with the dogmas of the church. It is a 
principle of all Unitarian churches, that saving faith is not 
in form of sound words, but in the sense of clear ideas ; 
that sincerity is the prime requisite in all religious state- 
ments and confessions. They will never ask a convert to 
say that he believes one jot or tittle more than he does 
sincerely believe, even if he may be kept out of the king- 
dom of heaven by the defects of his faith. Strict and per- 
fect sincerity is the avenue by which they would send forth 
their confession of belief. 

7. A seventh principle of the Unitarian Church is, that 
character is better than profession of any kind, and that pro- 
fession without character is good for nothing. The char- 
acter of a man tells what he really believes better than 
his words can tell this. The acts of a man, his general 



UNITARIAN PRINCIPLES. 397 



tone of thought and habits of life, are the expression of 
his real creed. We look for his belief at what he is, and 
not what he says he is. We ask for better proof than any 
declarations, specially made. The creed is written in the 
life, and the world reads it from the man's life. Every 
article must be practically witnessed by the general tenor 
of the man's acts or words. This all Unitarians assert, 
whether they have a creed or not, that the creed is second 
to the life, and must never be made the evidence or the 
substitute for the righteousness of the man. They infer 
no man's Christianity from the ease and readiness with 
which he repeats the phrases of the catechism ; but they 
look first at the work which he does, at what he shows 
himself to be, whether his life and acts have any resem- 
blance to the acts and life of the Christ. That is first, 
last, and always their test of the Christian character. 

These which we have mentioned, — the right of private 
judgment ; reason as the arbiter of truth ; that no man is 
infallible ; that no creed can contain the whole of religion ; 
that difference of faith is necessary and inevitable ; that 
sincere faith is the only true faith; and that life and char- 
acter prove real belief; — are principles admitted by all 
Unitarians. Turning from these to speak of doctrines, we 
have to say at the outset, that no person can pretend to 
tell more than the average faith of the body to which he 
belongs. The Unitarian Church have not, and they never 
will have, any authoritative creed, any series of articles of 
which one may say, " that is the creed of the sect," any 
thing which corresponds to the Augsburg Confession of 
the Lutherans, or to the Westminster Catechism of the 
Presbyterians, or to the Thirty-nine Articles of the Eng- 
lish Church. One who attempts to tell the doctrines of 
the Unitarian body must gather these from his study of 
the books which have been published by leading writers, 
and from his general acquaintance with the men and 
women of the body. He can only speak from impres- 
sions, and he has no right to commit any one else to his 
opinion. 

The first and highest doctrine of a religious system is 
the doctrine of God. If there is no doctrine of God, there 
can be no theology. What do Unitarians, in their average 
faith, believe of God? 



39 8 UNITARIAN PRINCIPLES, 

i. They believe in the existence of God, and in his per- 
sonal existence ; that he is a personal being, with mind, 
will, feeling, and power, all infinite ; that his attributes of 
infinite 'knowledge, infinite power, infinite love, all inhere 
in a substance which is real. They do not attempt to 
show the form of this great person, to show the mode of 
this infinite existence, to show what kind of a being a self- 
existing being — ■ who never was born and who can never 
die — is. They simply say that they believe that there is 
a God : they are not atheists. 

2. Then, in the second place, they believe in God as the 
Creator of all the things which are in the universe, giving 
in the beginning the germ of all worlds, and establishing 
the laws of generation and development, by which the 
universe has become what it is ; that what we seem to see, 
and what we call matter, existed originally in the Divine 
thought ; that God is the author of all being, mediately, or 
immediately ; that all things come from God, on earth or 
in heaven. 

3. In the third place, Unitarians believe that God is a 
just God ; in other words, that he rules the world by laws 
which are sure, unvarying, impartial, and universal ; that 
there is nothing in the universe which is not subject to 
law ; that spiritual processes are as much under the do- 
minion of God's law as material processes, — every being, 
high and low ; a grain of sand, or a planet in its orbit ; 
the flowers of the morning faded at night, or the cedar of 
Lebanon with its thousand years ; the meanest reptile and 
the greatest man ; everything that has being, is subject to 
a law which the Infinite Ruler keeps for it. They say 
that God's will is just, because it is according to law, and 
that when men have discovered the law of any being's 
life, they have found the Divine justice concerning it. 
The sternest Calvinist could not believe in the justice of 
God more absolutely than the Unitarians believe in it. 
The laws of God are his decrees, and he has decrees for 
everything that he has made. There are no exceptions 
to these laws ; what seem to men the exceptions, are only 
the result of laws which they have not yet discovered. 
God is the Infinite and Supreme Ruler of all the things 
that are made. 



UNITARIAN PRINCIPLES. 399 

4. In the fourth place, Unitarians believe that God is 
a loving and tender Father, having in infinite measure all 
that love for his creatures which earthly parents have for 
their children ; that God's creatures are his children; that 
he loves them all, blesses them all, wills the best good 
of them all, and is never weary of loving them. This 
fatherly love is his providence for them, — general for all 
together, special for every one. Unitarians do not believe 
in any partial providence, any love or care which is for 
one family and not for another, one people and not for 
another, one race and not for another, one church and not 
for another, one age and not for another; — but in a prov- 
idence which extends to all ages, all churches, all races, 
all peoples, all families, all men, and all creatures, special 
always, because always present and never wanting. The 
fullest idea of an ever-present, ever-active, ever-tender, 
ever-kind love of the Father of all creatures is the Unita- 
rian idea of Providence. In their idea God can never be 
a hating God, can never cease to love and care for any of 
his children. His love is incomprehensible, only because 
it is so immense and infinite, so much beyond all human 
love. 

5. And the name of the Unitarian body suggests 
another peculiarity of their belief concerning God, — in 
his Unity. They believe that he is one, not divided in 
his Deity, not dual, or triple, or quadruple, or centuple, 
but strictly one. They believe that he exists in one being, 
and one person, that all his manifestations are gathered 
and concentrated in this single personality. They speak 
of him as one person in describing his work. They ad- 
dress him as one person when they pray to him. His being 
is single and singular. It is not the society of Gods of 
which Unitarians think when they think of God. They 
keep this conception of unity because it is simple, is ra- 
tional, and best explains the work of Providence and Cre- 
ation. They believe in the unity of God as distinguished 
from Pagan Polytheism, or from philosophical Trinities, 
such as those of India and Greece, and such as those of 
the church-creeds. They find it entirely possible to wor- 
ship God the Father without having any other God to 
divide his worship. And in worshipping God the Father, 



400 UNITARIAN PRINCIPLES. 

they worship the God whom Jesus himself worshipped, 
and whom his word has taught them to worship. 

This, then, is what the Unitarians believe of God : that 
he exists as a person ; that he creates all things ; that he 
is just, as he rules by law ; that he loves, as an Infinite 
Father, all his children ; and that he is one God, not di- 
vided in his essence. How his being is, what it is, what 
is his form, they do not know, they do not care to know. 
The finite cannot comprehend the infinite. And they say 
of God, that no searching can find him out, and that all 
dictation of what he must be and what he must do, is fool- 
ish and irreverent. They affirm, as much as any sect, the 
mystery of the Godhead • only it is to them real mystery 
by its greatness and fulness, and not by its mathematical 
enigma. God is the eternal wonder of the human soul, so 
high, so vast, so complete in glory, that no thought can 
attain his being ; — but he is in no sense the puzzle of the 
soul, vexing it continually by an existence which seems 
false and wrong, according to the laws of thought. The 
mystery of the Godhead in the Unitarian creed is not the 
part of God which lies nearest, but the outlying greatness 
which shades the farther circle, and is lost in the infinite 
distance. 

Next to the doctrine of God, in a system of theology, is 
the doctrine of Man. What do Unitarians believe con- 
cerning Man ? 

i. They believe, in the first place, that in his physical 
nature man is part of the orderly system of organic crea- 
tions. He makes one of the series of animated and organ- 
ized beings. He has wants, instincts, desires, in common 
with other animals. He eats, drinks, sleeps, walks and 
runs, rises and rests, utters sounds, and communicates his 
feeling as beasts, birds and insects do. The structure of 
his frame is not essentially different from the structure of 
other animal frames. It has the same proportion and ad- 
justment of bone, and nerve, and muscle, of heart and 
brain. Man is animal, is born as animals are born, dies 
as animals die, in bodily organization, has the same limi- 
tations to his physical being. His spiritual nature exempts 
him from none of the physical laws. He is as much under 
these laws, subject to physical conditions, as the humblest 



UNITARIAN PRINCIPLES. 401 

creature of God. Anywhere on the earth, man has his 
place and his share in the physical order of the earth. 
Physically, he is not more wonderfully made than any 
plant or crystal. 

2. But Unitarians believe, in the next place, that man 
is at the head of this series, is the highest and most impor- 
tant of all the visible works of God's hand. They believe 
in the dignity of his nature, that he is, and was meant to 
be, Lord of Creation, the master of the forces of the world, 
and of the lives below him ; that he has larger powers, 
finer feeling, quicker perception, greater range of action, 
than any of the other beings with which he stands in line ; 
that there is nothing above him in this world, and that 
the imagination can conceive nothing of which his nature 
is not capable. They believe that man has an intelligence 
more perfect, a will more energetic, than any brute beast; 
that he has, in short, a nature more spiritual than any, — 
that man has a soul. Concerning the nature of that soul, 
they hold differing opinions. There is no uniform Unita- 
rian psychology, as there is no uniform orthodox psychol- 
ogy. But upon the fact that man has a soul, they are 
generally agreed. The spiritual worth and dignity of the 
human soul is more insisted upon in the writings of the 
Unitarians than in the writings of any religious sect. 

3. And then Unitarians believe that this spiritual dig- 
nity is a possibility of the whole human race, and is not 
the property or prerogative of any particular portion of 
the race. They are far from maintaining that all men are 
actually equal, in the life that they have, but they main- 
tain that all men are potentially equal, in what they may 
become, and that they have the same spiritual rights. 
They have all the same Father, no matter where they are 
born, under what sky, in what corner of the earth, to what 
custom of life, to what kind of influence. The savage is a 
man, and has the rights of a man. The negro is a man, 
and has the rights of a man. The idolater is a man as 
much as the Christian. Woman is human, and human 
rights are hers. Unitarians have no dogma about the 
first human pair, or the first creation of the race ; where 
it was; in Asia or America; when it was, six thousand 
years ago, or six hundred thousand years ago ; in one pair 

26 



402 UNITARIAN PRINCIPLES. 

or in one hundred pairs, or by development from lower 
races ; but they believe in the unity of the human race, 
as men everywhere have moral sense and religious sense, 
and may be educated to a spiritual life and into a kingdom 
of heaven. All men are spiritually children of God. 

4. Yet, on the other hand, Unitarians believe in the 
actual imperfection of men. None, anywhere, are as good 
as they might be, as good as they ought to be. All men 
are sinners, to use the common word, because they trans- 
gress laws which are appointed for their physical and 
spiritual 'welfare. This transgression is sometimes volun- 
tary and deliberate ; men know that they are transgress- 
ing. Oftener it is involuntary, and is discovered only by 
the penalty which it brings. Unitarians say that even 
the best man, who is most careful of his heart and way, 
is not perfect; that he does, or says, or thinks what is 
not best, that he makes mistakes, that he violates law. 
There is no one who is in all things wholly righteous. On 
the fact of sin, Unitarians have a doctrine as positive as 
the doctrine of any sect. All men are sinners, all women 
are sinners, all children even, are sinners, in the sense that 
they do what they ought not to do, and leave undone the 
things which they ought to do. All who violate the laws 
of their being commit sin, and will be punished for that 
sin ; the smallest or the greatest violation of law has its 
inevitable penalty. 

The condition of man as a sinner, as a transgressor of 
law, makes it necessary to have a doctrine concerning De- 
liverance from Sin, — concerning what, in the ecclesiastical 
dialect, is termed "Salvation." What is the Unitarian 
doctrine of Salvation ? 

1. Unitarians believe that salvation is deliverance f?-om 
sin itself — from its influence, its mastery, its inner force 
and outer force. They do not expect or ask for deliver- 
ance from the penalties of sins committed, or from the 
penalties of sin while the sins themselves are retained. 
They believe that the only way of escaping the punish- 
ment of sins is to get rid of the sins themselves. They do 
not believe in sin as an abstraction, but in sins as realities. 
The best way, and the only way, of getting rid of sin is by 
dealing with sins as realities, as things, and not as an in- 



UNITARIAN PRINCIPLES. 403 

fluence in things. Deliverance from sin is wrought by 
rectifying the sources of transgression, by substituting 
right principles for wrong principles, right affections for 
wrong affections, a right direction of life for a wrong di- 
rection of life, by getting temptations out of the way, by 
purifying passions and appetites. 

Unitarians believe that the method of salvation varies 
in the case of different persons. Where men are conscious 
of any violation of law, the first step must be repentance 
and a resolution to change from such violation. Where 
they are not conscious of such violation of law, the evil 
must be remedied by better surrounding influences and 
better education. The ordinary means of saving men 
from sins are training them from childhood in the way of 
virtue, giving them good precepts and good examples, 
encouraging all that is pure and righteous in their con- 
duct and conversation, keeping around them an atmos- 
phere of purity, removing all that imbrutes and debases. 
As so much of the sin of men comes from the circum- 
stances of men, — their mode of life, their society, the in- 
fluences around them, — they will be saved by setting 
these circumstances right, by making them more comfort- 
able. As so much of sin comes from disorder in the phys- 
ical frame, salvation comes in sanitary reforms, in better 
air, more light, more exercise, more physical health. Uni- 
tarians believe that men are saved by the application of 
the remedy exactly to the need ; not by any arbitrary and 
artificial scheme which is the same for all, and has no 
connection with the special offence, but by the remedy 
that belongs to the disease. They would not deliver one 
person from melancholy by the same process which is to 
deliver another from drunkenness. They would not save 
one person from jealousy as another is saved from the 
habit of stealing. The salvation must be adapted to the 
offence, whatever that offence may be. Salvation has its 
difference in degree as well as its difference in kind. A 
great deal more of it is needed in some cases than is needed 
in other cases. Those who are spiritually wise need very 
little of it ; those who are spiritually blind and ignorant 
need a great deal of it. It is much more difficult in some 
cases than in other cases ; more difficult when the sin is of 



404 UNITARIAN PRINCIPLES. 

habit and temperament than when it is of sudden temp- 
tation, and not natural ; more difficult when it is bound 
up with interests and passions than when it stands aside 
from the daily course of life. There are some occupations 
and positions in life in which deliverance from sin is ex- 
tremely improbable, some callings in which life seems only 
possible through continued sin. 

Unitarians believe in change of heart, where the emotion 
and direction of the heart need to be changed, but the 
saving change in their theology means always a change of 
life and action; a coming back from violation of law to 
obedience to law. Salvation is the reconciliation of the 
life to the laws of God, the restoration of the transgressor 
to obedience. In this work all the change is in the life, 
spirit, and purpose of men ; there is no change in the 
Divine Father or in his laws. God does not repent ; only 
man repents. God does not alter his work or his coun- 
sels ; only man changes his work and his counsel. Unita- 
rians do not believe in any transaction between God and 
man in this matter of salvation, or any scheme by which 
Divine attributes are adjusted in a work which is wholly 
the concern of the creature. Change of heart and life 
does not merely guarantee salvation, not merely win 
this,— it is salvation. The salvation comes in the obedi- 
ence to law, not merely after the obedience to law. Uni- 
tarians believe in future salvation as identical with present 
salvation ; and hold that the only real salvation is present 
salvation. A man is saved in the spiritual world as he is 
saved in the natural world, — by obedience to the laws of 
his being. 

The most important influence in tlris deliverance of the 
soul and life of man from sin is the Christian religion. 
This saves men in most civilized lands ; though Unitarians 
believe, too, that heathen religions have saving qualities, 
and that the Chinese are saved from sin by the teachings 
of Confucius, the Persians by the teachings of Zoroaster ; 
that men are made better by the moral truths even of 
idolatrous faiths. But they believe that the best of all re- 
ligions — the religion which gives the highest, broadest, 
and most spiritual salvation — is the religion which holds 
the name of Christ. They accept Christ as the Saviour of 



UNITARIAN PRINCIPLES. 4°5 

those who become his disciples, and know his Gospel ; and 
as indirectly the Saviour of many who are not called by 
his name, and are not conscious that they know his Gospel. 
The average Unitarian faith" exalts the salvation which is 
from Christ, and gives it all the practical force which it 
has in any creed. No epithets of honor are too strong to 
describe this great salvation. 

But the Unitarian idea of this salvation is not that it is 
mystical, unnatural, outside of the ordinary ways of influ- 
ences, but strictly according to the natural way of influ- 
ence. Christ saves men by his teaching, by telling them 
what is just, pure, good, true, noble, and divine, by giving 
them good instruction, by giving them right moral and 
religious ideas. He is the great teacher, whose words are 
wiser than those of prophets and sages. Christ saves men 
by his example; showing in his own conduct and conver- 
sation, as we read his biographies, what way of life, what 
kind of intercourse, makes men happy, and gives a clear 
conscience and the sense of God's nearness. Christ saves 
by the spirit of his work, which was in healing and bless- 
ing men. Christ saves by his fortitude in suffering, in- 
stanced in many ways, but especially by his death upon 
the cross ; which is, moreover, the supreme sign of self- 
devotion and sacrifice. Christ saves, as he shows in his 
word and his act, in his life and death, the incarnation of 
the Divine spirit, — the life of a Divine Man. In speaking 
and thinking of the salvation of Christ, Unitarians do not 
separate the human from the divine in his nature, or one 
part of his life from another. Men are not saved by his 
miraculous birth, or by his miraculous death, or by any- 
thing in his history that is apart from practical adaptation 
to the human soul. Men are saved by forming his life 
within their lives, by becoming like him in spirit, in pur- 
pose, in virtue, and in faith, by the whole of his life, and 
by the general influence of his work. They are saved by 
the Christianity which has got into the customs of society, 
which has been fixed in the statutes and laws, which has 
entered into the relations of life, of business, of the State, 
or of the Church. Among Unitarians there are various 
views of the nature and the being of jesus of Nazareth. 
Some think that he was different by constitution from all 



406 UNITARIAN PRINCIPLES. 

other men, with no human father ; while others think that 
he was what his own Apostles supposed him to be, the 
son of Joseph the carpenter, and that he had brothers and 
sisters, as the narrative says. Some think that he lived in 
an angelic state before he was born, while others give to 
him no more pre-existence than to any man. Some think 
that his rising from the dead was in the flesh with which 
he died, while others think, like the women at the sepul- 
chre, that it was a spirit which appeared in the form of 
man. But whatever these differing views about the kind 
and degree of the humanity of Jesus, all Unitarians believe 
that he saves men by natural influence on their hearts and 
lives, as he teaches them, shows them their sin., inspires 
them to seek better things, and demonstrates to them the 
kingdom of God, the man of God, and the life of God. 
All Unitarians find this sufficient, without any scheme or 
contrivance by which God has to appease his own wrath 
in the slaughter of an innocent person for the sins of a 
guilty world. In the Unitarian phrase, the word " atone- 
ment " always means, as it meant in the one place where it 
is used in the New Testament, — reco7iciliation ; and that re- 
conciliation is in bringing the souls of men to sympathy 
with God and his laws. The Unitarian Christology is of 
one who prepares the souls of men to be the dwelling- 
place of God's spirit, of a mediator who gives to the soul 
the message and the substance of the life of God ; who 
showed in a simple human life of compassion, love, and 
faithfulness, the visible inspiration of God. 

And this leads us to say that Unitarians believe that 
there is a special influence of the spirit of God upon the 
souls' of men. They believe that men are inspired, are 
quickened, are enlightened and energized by this divine 
influence ; that it is in the word of prophets and in the 
acts of saints. They believe that there was inspiration in 
the ancient time, and that there is inspiration in the mod- 
ern time ; that there is a faith in spiritual things, a sight 
of spiritual truths, which is not the result of investigation, 
or of logical process, but which is given directly, which 
comes in conscious communion with God. They believe 
that prayer is the natural and the effectual method of this 
communion with God, that the Divine Spirit always comes 



UNITARIAN PRINCIPLES. 407 

near to the souls of men when they pray sincerely, when 
they pour out their souls in petition for spiritual gifts, or 
recognize the providence and love of a living God. Uni- 
tarians use prayer, and believe in it, though they attach to 
it no superstitious ideas, and do not think that its influence 
is in any sense supernatural. They believe in prayer as 
wholly according to the spiritual law ; as the necessary 
way of gaining graces of the soul, and of holding conscious 
intercourse with God. They have not all the same philos- 
ophy of its working. Some think that it may move the 
mind of God, while others see its effective work in the 
minds and hearts of men. But all confess that it has its 
place in the way of the spiritual life, and that inspiration 
comes through prayer. 

Unitarians believe, as really as Evangelical sects in their 
prayer meetings, that men may be, and ought to be, in- 
spired to-day as truly as in any former day ; as really, too, 
as Roman Catholics, that inspiration ought to be, and that 
it is, in the Christian Church. They have a very positive 
doctrine concerning the Church. They say that the Church 
is the spiritual union and fellowship of all Christian men 
and women, of all men and women who have the spirit of 
Christ in their hearts and are trying to do his work ; that 
it is not to be fastened in any sectarian enclosure, or de- 
scribed by any sectarian name ; that no denomination of 
Christians has a right to call itself "the" Church, exclu- 
sive of other denominations ; that all righteous and God- 
fearing men and women, who are trying to realize the 
kingdom and justice of God, as revealed by Christ, are in 
the Church, members of the Church, whether they 'belong 
to any particular Church or not, whether or not they have 
taken any sectarian name ; that the Holy Spirit admits 
men to the Church, and not the laying on of a priest's 
hands or the uttering of a few phrases ; that a great many 
persons are in the Church who have never confessed their 
faith before men, and have never gone through any pro- 
cess of conversion that they have known. Unitarians 
believe in the " Holy Catholic Church " in the largest 
sense of that phrase, not as meaning Roman Catholic, or 
Anglo-Catholic, or Presbyterian Catholic, or Catholic with 
any local or sectarian prefix, but as meaning the whole 



408 UNITARIAN PRINCIPLES. 



company of those who have been influenced by the great 
salvation. The Church is as wide as the world and as 
wide as the presence of the Lord. They believe, as Paul 
believed, that even a multitude of the heathen, without 
knowing it. are in the Church of Christ; that the only 
Church which Christ formed, or intended to form, was 
this spiritual Church, which knew no distinction of name, 
and had no rejection of any who might wish to come into 
it. Unitarians do not believe in a Church which bars or 
bolts its doors to any that wish to come in, or which sets 
in the gateway any barrier or test of human opinion or 
human creed. They believe in a free Church, not in a 
fenced Church, in a Church which is recruited always and 
is never full. 

Unitarians have no doctrine of sacraments, except as 
all obligations, all solemn promises, are sacraments. Bap- 
tism they call a sacrament, as it is a pledge of a man or 
woman for themselves, or for their children, that they will 
try to realize the righteousness of God in their own lives, 
or in the lives of their children. Unitarians have no holy- 
water, and pray when they baptize that the man may con- 
secrate himself or his children by that sign of purification. 
The external act is only a sign, and they regard the man- 
ner of administration as of no importance, whether it is 
by touching the forehead or plunging the body. Marriage 
is a sacrament, as it is the promise of two souls to keep 
spiritual union, and to be faithful to one another in the 
most momentous of earthly relations. The Lord's Supper 
is a sacrament, as it renews from time to time the promise 
of brotherly love. Unitarians attach no superstitious 
ideas to this so-called rite. It is not to them a repetition 
of the tragedy of Calvary, or a peculiar privilege of men 
initiated into a secret society or a reward of religious 
merit ; — in no sense an awful mystery. It is simply a me- 
morial feast, calling to mind the last supper of Jesus and 
his disciples, and signifying the relation which the disci- 
ples of Jesus always bear to one another. Some Unita- 
rians attach more importance to this memorial than others, 
but all agree in making it a means of religion, and not in 
any sense an end. None that I know would keep any 
person away from the Lord's table who may wish to come 



UNITARIAN PRINCIPLES. 409 

there, whatever his name, his profession, or his character. 
Unitarians believe that the communion of the Lord's Sup- 
per ought to be always free, as it was free in the beginning, 
and they have no measure of fitness for it. They make 
their invitation to it as broad as was the invitation of Paul 
and Timothy. The Lord's Supper which they believe in 
is not the Mass of the Catholic Church, or the solemn 
symbol of the Evangelical elect, separated from the world, 
but the memorial feast as they find it in the Scriptures of 
the New Testament. 

Unitarians take the books of the Bible as the record of 
the teaching of God to the Jewish people and to the early 
Christians through their wise men and their prophets. 
Their doctrine of the Bible is, that it is a collection of 
books on various subjects, — historical, biographical, poeti- 
cal and moral, of various value, but mostly with a relig- 
ious bearing and purpose. The inspiration which they 
find in the Bible is an inspiration of the men whose story 
is told, not an inspiration of the words and letters. The 
Old Testament is the literature of the Jewish people ; the 
New Testament is the early Christian literature. Unita- 
rians pri^e the Bible as much as any sect ; use it in their 
churches, use it in their homes, gladly assist in its circula- 
tion ; but they do not make an idol of this sacred book, 
and worship its name. They prize it for the ideas which 
it holds, and the truth that it contains, and do not make 
more of it than it really is, or contend that it is what it 
never claims to be. To them the Bible is in the words of 
men, — Hebrew and Greek, Latin and English ; and it has 
the characteristics of human thought and speech, even 
while it tells the will of God. 

And the Unitarian doctrine of the Sacred Day is that it 
is the Lord's Day, which preserves in memory that great 
event in the life of Christ which took away from his fol- 
lowers the fear of death. They do not think of this day 
as the Jewish Sabbath, loaded with prohibitions, a day on 
which it is sinful to walk or ride, to laugh or to be joyful, 
but as a day for the exercise of all the best and freest 
natural affections. It is no more sacred in itself than any 
other days of the week, and has no moral code peculiar 
to itself. The Unitarian doctrine is that the Sabbath 



4i o UNITARIAN PRINCIPLES. 

was made for man and not man for the Sabbath ; that 
there is no more reason for wearing sad countenances 
when men worship together than when they work to- 
gether. The dignity of the day comes in the spiritual 
quickening which it gives ; in its associations with what is 
beautiful, and pure, and friendly, and fraternal ; in its 
separating men from selfish cares and joining them in com- 
mon prayers for mutual good ; in giving them experience 
of the heavenly life, which is the immortal life. On the 
Lord's Day men feel their true life, and they have this 
more abundantly. 

And the Unitarian doctrine of death is, that it is only a 
change in the condition of life, not an extinction of life itself. 
It has no power to destroy the soul, but all its work is in 
taking vitality from the bodily frame, and leaving the 
parts of this to dissolve and enter into new material forms. 
The soul, the living spirit of the man, unclothed from its 
mortal part, assumes now a spiritual body, suited to a new 
world and new needs of life. The philosophy of the spir- 
itual world is not uniform with Unitarian believers. Some 
have it nicely drawn out, and can make pictures of it, 
while with others it lies vague and undefined. But all 
that I know agree in rejecting the crude notion of the res- 
urrection of the physical body, and in denying any neces- 
sary union between the soul and body after death has 
parted them. Most Unitarians believe in the recognition 
of departed friends, that souls which have been joined on 
earth in love will still keep union in the spiritual world ; 
that in the disembodied world there are near societies, 
families and kindreds, though the physical ties exist no 
longer. There are some who think and speak of Heaven 
as a place ; but the faith of the wisest treats Heaven as a 
state, which may be as real on the earth as beyond the 
earth. 

In regard to rewards and punishments in the future life, 
Unitarians have no doctrine separate from their general 
doctrine of law and its violations. They believe that all 
good deeds have their inevitable reward, cannot fail to 
bring the happiness and peace which they deserve, but 
that the thought or expectation of personal happiness, 
here or hereafter, is not the proper motive of Christian 



UNITARIAN PRINCIPLES. 411 

virtue. Men should do good, because that is right, because 
that is the will of God, not because it will give them some 
individual blessing. So they believe that every sin has its 
penalty which cannot be escaped, and that the spiritual 
penalty of sin will endure as long as the sin lasts, and un- 
til it shall have wrought its due and needful reformation. 
How long in time this will be, they cannot tell; but they 
believe that God's counsel will not fail through man's 
transgression, and that it is the Lord's will that not one 
of his rational creatures should utterly and forever perish. 
They expect, in the consummation of all things, the uni- 
versal reign of the Lord. 

This is a rapid and concise statement of the average 
Unitarian opinion upon the principal points of religious 
doctrine. Unitarians claim that these views are rational, 
and can be maintained without doing violence to reason ; 
that they are Scriptural, and can be justified from the 
spirit and from the letter of the Christian record, rightly 
read ; that they are agreeable to the best instincts of the 
soul ; that they are harmonious with the science of nature, 
and with the needs of human life ; that children can un- 
derstand them, and that the mature mind does not out- 
grow them ; that they are good to live by, and that they 
are good to die by. This system of^ doctrine has satisfied 
and still satisfies, the wisest men ancl the best men ; men 
who are honored, trusted, and loved ; men who are listened 
to respectfully, and are followed by the praise and rever- 
ence of the whole community. Three of the American 
Presidents have been members of the Unitarian Church, 
and two others have given this faith in substance as their 
creed. Of Judges, Governors, Senators, Congressmen, 
elected by votes of the Evangelical sects, who have pro- 
fessed this faith, the list would be a very long one. The 
most distinguished of the writers of the country, in his- 
tory, in poetry, in philosophy, in art, are nearly all Unita- 
rians. The ablest public speakers find inspiration in these 
views of God and man. So far as great names lend credit 
to any doctrine, this Unitarian doctrine certainly has it. 
But it has in quite as large measure the better credit of 
noble and beautiful lives, of saintly men and women, who 
rise, a cloud of witnesses, to tell what it has done for 



412 UNITARIAN PRINCIPLES. 

them. The worst bigot in Massachusetts would not dare 
to call Governor Andrew an " infidel," though he was as 
faithful to care for his Sunday-school class in the Unita- 
rian Church of the Disciples as for the wounded in the 
hospitals and the soldiers in the field. No faith has ever 
been more ready to prove itself by works of love and 
mercy than this faith. If it has not sent many missiona- 
ries to fight against idolatry in heathen lands, and substi- 
tute for this idolatry the creeds of Augustine or Calvin, it 
has sent far more than its proportion of missionaries into 
the waste places at home, into the haunts of wickedness, 
to convert the blind, and the erring, and the sinful. No 
one can deny that Unitarian Christianity makes ministers 
of practical righteousness. 

Unitarians are not indifferent to the good-will of the 
Christians around them. They do not like to be misrep- 
resented, or to be treated as outlaws, even by ignorant 
and bigoted men. But they can stand alone, and are not 
to be driven from their position by any slanders. They 
will hold fast to what they believe to be truth, even if they 
are denounced as unbelievers, or are denied a place in the 
great salvation. They want no Heaven which is won by 
compromise and hypocrisy ; and they will lose the society 
of men whom they respect rather than be false to the 
word of God as it is spoken to their souls. They hold 
their doctrine not as a finality or a perpetually binding 
creed, but as ready always to revise and improve it, as 
the spirit of God shall give them more light and knowl- 
edge. They own no master but the great Teacher, the 
great source of spiritual wisdom, and they are content to 
abide his judgment. They ask no triumph or success, but 
the triumph which truth shall give them, as shown in the 
logic of their argument, and as shown in the lives of their 
confessors. 



CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JEWS. 413 



XVII. 

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JEWISH RACE. 

Nothing in our time is more remarkable than the 
change in the kind of interest which is taken in the for- 
tunes and character of the Hebrew race. For ages, Chris- 
tians have had rather an archaeological heed of the people 
who were their religious ancestors, and have limited their 
concern to the religious books and the ancient doings of a 
nation once the people of God, but who forfeited their 
right by their rejection of the Christ, and virtually became 
heathen. Since that fatal act of impiety, the Jews have 
been as good as dead to a vast majority of the Christian 
world, and have been known only as subjects of persecu- 
tion and outrage of every kind, illustrating in their fate 
the sure Divine vengeance upon wickedness. A hundred 
years ago the praise of a Jew by a Christian would have 
brought suspicion upon the Christian, and almost have 
condemned him as a blasphemer and an infidel. In the Mid- 
dle Age, the Jew was the type of all that was mean, treach- 
erous, false, and infamous. His - squalid garb, his cringing 
gait, his malignant leer, his avaricious heart, were the mark 
of the satirists, and the proof for the preachers of the 
justice of an offended God. The Jew had no rights that 
Christians were bound to respect. He was an outlaw, 
only tolerated from prudence or policy. He could be 
abused in his person, robbed of his purse, driven like a dog 
from his home, could be spit upon, beaten, burned, with 
no one to defend him, or even to pity him. To call a 
Christian "Jew" was the height of insult. The foot of a 
Christian was polluted in crossing the threshold of a Jew, 
or the barrier of his quarter in the cities. It was sacrilege 
for a Christian to marry a daughter of the hated race. 
Kings and lords might use the rich Hebrews for the neces- 
sities of luxury or war, but the convenience of their loans 



414 CRA11ACTERISTJCS OF THE JEWS. 

did not bring more consideration for their lineage. 
Shakespeare in his Shylock, Walter Scott in his Isaac of 
York have not overdrawn the scorn and contempt which 
followed the Jew of the former centuries. 

But all that is strangely changed. The lost honor of 
the Jews has been restored. The persecutions have ceased. 
In most civilized lands the Jews stand equal with the 
Christians, with the same rights, with the same privileges, 
with as good consideration from the rulers, and less harmed 
by bigotry than the Christian sects around them. They 
are in the high places of trust and power, — ministers of 
finance, ministers of education, peers of the realm, mayors 
of great cities, senators in the assembly, close counselors 
of the kings. Their worship is recognized as lawful, 
and even supported by largess from the State, as much 
as Catholic or Protestant worship. In the very lands 
where they were once fiercely hated and driven, their syn- 
agogues now surpass in splendor the most costly of the 
Christian temples. In Berlin, the Hebrew temple to-day 
is larger than the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, and 
has beauties which the Temple of Solomon could not 
show. In America — in New York, and Cincinnati, and 
in many more places, — the synagogues rival the grandest 
of the Christian structures, and they stand proudly on the 
corners of the principal streets. 

The Jews now claim their full share of public duties and 
public rewards. They seek offices and they get offices. 
They supervise the doings of Christian Boards of Trade 
and in Boards of Instruction. The Rabbi may be the 
Committee in a school where the words of Jesus and the 
story of the crucifixion are read by the teachers to the pu- 
pils. The secular and the sectarian journals chronicle the 
acts of the Jews as carefully and candidly as they chroni- 
cle the acts of any Christian sect ; give abstracts of their 
synagogue sermons, reports of their solemn feasts and fasts, 
their Passover and Pentecost, and their Yom Kippur, 
and their joyous Purim, as much as of the Christian 
Christmas, and Lent, and Easter. In the almanacs, the 
Jewish calendar accompanies the Christian. The Jewish 
newspapers abound, and in vigor and variety compare 
favorably with the Christian weeklies, and furnish edifying 



CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JEWS. 415 

reading to the disciples of Jesus. If they have in our 
land no university as yet, the Jews have famous seminaries 
in other lands, and the sons of their race bear off high 
honors in the Christian colleges. The reproach of the 
name has utterly vanished, and no horror is expressed 
when Christians renounce their faith ; when " love " makes 
of the son or daughter of some Christian communion an 
Israelite of the ancient pattern. A change of that kind 
does not degrade the social standing of the person who 
makes it. 

In the novels and dramas that are now written, a Jew is 
oftener the hero than the villain of the piece ■ his virtue, 
his faith, his magnanimity, are set in contrast with Chris- 
tian selfishness and falsehood. Lessing's " Nathan the 
Wise " has become the type of nobleness, which is com- 
mended in orthodox works of fiction. Disraeli is not the 
only famous writer who finds pleasure in making the race 
of Abraham the pioneers of civilization, and the arbiters 
of the world's destiny. Writers who have no Hebrew 
blood, and no. filial feeling in their discourse, expatiate 
upon the great service of the Jews to the world, in art and 
science, in letters and music, in commerce and discovery. 
In the current literature of Europe, the Jew has a singular 
prominence, more than rivaling that given in America to 
the negro, its former pariah. Japhet is concerned for 
Shem as well as for Ham ; and while enthusiasm for the 
negro is declining, interest in the Israelite is gaining. 
Christians are not unwilling to look at their own religion 
as it appears from a Jewish position, and to listen to Jew- 
ish judgment upon their claim. They are reconsidering 
the case of the ancient Jews, are allowing that the rabble, 
and even the better class, who shouted at the crucifixion, 
sinned from ignorance rather than will, and that many of 
the Pharisees were godly and faithful men. Some prejudice 
against the Jew may remain, but it is not religious prej- 
udice. There are missions for the conversion of Jews 
in Moslem lands, — a feeble one in Jerusalem; but few 
expect or care for the conversion of the Jews in the West- 
ern lands. The least trusted of the race are those who 
pretend to be Christians ; and dealing with them is as un- 
safe as of the Jews with the ancient Samaritans. This 



4*6 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JEWS. 

change in the position and honor of the Jewish race is cer- 
tainly one of the most striking social phenomena of our 
age. It realizes the saying of Zechary the prophet : "Ten 
men shall take hold, out of all languages of the nations, 
shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, 
' We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with 
you.' " 

This new favor which the Jewish race has found, invites 
to a study of its characteristics. Rabbi Jellinek, of Vien- 
na, in his admirable treatise, has drawn these very sharply, 
and has said only what the observation of intelligent minds 
will justify. The study of these characteristics is a study 
of contrasts, for the character of the Jew is a constant 
paradox in its apparent contradictions. The race is at 
once universal and special ; enthusiastic and sagacious ; 
conservative and progressive ; subjective and objective ; 
proud and humble ; passionate and patient ; economical 
and lavish; dogmatic and tolerant; — all these contra- 
dictions we find in its character, to mention no more. 
It is a race wmich justifies by its style and its spirit the 
most opposite estimates. This combination of contrasts 
seems to warrant the theory of the future triumph of the 
race as the synthesis of humanity, harmonizing opposites, 
reconciling discords, and so inheriting the promise of uni- 
versal dominion. The reasoning which infers this triumph 
is rather fanciful, and mistakes association of contrasts for 
fusion. To the minds of careful thinkers these contrasts 
leave rather an impression of incompleteness than of gen- 
uine harmony. The dualisms are too evident to give the 
sense of unity. 

i. The first peculiarity that appears in the study of the 
Jewish race is, that it is at once universal and special, in its 
spirit and in its place in the world. It is everywhere, and 
yet it is a race by itself. It has no particular country or 
home, and yet it is separated from all other races, in what- 
ever country it may be. The Jew is found in all the na- 
tions, barbarous as well as civilized, and yet he keeps indi- 
viduality of race in all the nations. There are Jews in 
warm climates and in cold, in old nations and in new, in 
free nations and in despotic, in Pagan and Moslem and 
Christian nations ; and yet in all these the race is essentially 



CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JEWS. 417 

the same. The English Jew is brother not only to the 
American, but to the Moorish and Egyptian and Persian 
Jew. The spirit of the race is the same under whatever sky. 
No race better adapts itself to circumstances, yet no race 
more resists circumstances in change of character or faith. 
The Jew makes himself everywhere at home, in great cities 
or small cities, in wealthy communities or poor, yet remains 
the same person in all, not to be mistaken for those with 
whom he dwells. In France, he is a Frenchman, and has 
French manners ; in Egypt, he is an Egyptian, with Egyp- 
tian manners ; in Russia, he is a Russian, and lives like a 
Russian • nevertheless, no one mistakes him for a French- 
man, or an Egyptian, or a Russian proper, and the sign of 
dress is the least important of the marks which distinguish 
him. He speaks the language of the nation in which he 
lives, and correctly enough • but with a peculiar tone and 
accent, as distinct in Semitic and Turanian dialects as in 
the European tongues. The words of a German Jew are 
different from the words of a Spanish Jew, but the tone 
and the quality are the same. The Jew enters as heartily 
as any into, the politics, the civil and social affairs of the 
country in which he dwells. He enlists in its armies ; 
he votes in its assemblies ; he is eager in its amusements ; 
he is foremost in its traffic ; he does not stay aloof from 
any social call ; he has no conscientious hindrance from 
any civic duty. He adapts himself perfectly to exigencies 
of time and place. Yet, after all, the Jews mingling with 
the throngs in London and New York are as truly a pecu- 
liar people, as in the Ghetto of Rome, or the Judenstadt 
of Prague, or the huddled hovels of Mount Zion in 
Jerusalem. They are a community by themselves as much 
when they are gay and glittering in the Opera House of 
Chicago, the new Lake City of yesterday, as when they 
are bent and sad-eyed in the ruined lanes of ancient Ti- 
berias. 

This external peculiarity of the Jews is also manifest in 
their spirit. They keep by themselves and are tenacious of 
their ideas, yet no people in the world are more sensitive 
to the opinions of the people around them, or more anxious 
to secure the good-will of the Gentiles. The Jewish 
authors, poets, artists, musicians, do not work only or 
27 



41 8 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JEWS. 



mainly for their own people, but more for the alien races. 
Auerbach writes for Christian readers ; Meyerbeer com- 
posed for audiences of the heathen, while his enduring 
love was for the brethren of his faith. The Jewish com- 
posers, in music and in story, choose their themes outside 
of their own history. Moses in Egypt was the work of the 
Catholic Rossini ; while the Huguenots, and John of Ley- 
den, and Robert the Devil, were the heroes of the Jewish 
master. The complaint runs back to the time of the 
Alexandrine Philo that the Hebrew people are so greedy 
of Gentile praise, and so ready to adopt foreign ways in 
neglecting their own traditions ; and the very Philo, who 
thus grumbles, shows the fault which he rebukes in his own 
love for Greek speculations. That illustrious ambassador 
at the Roman Court not only used the Greek tongue in 
pleading for his people, but the very phrases of the Greek 
philosophy. Indeed, Jewish historians have marked the 
close resemblance of the spirit of Jews and Christians 
dwelling together, — how quickly Israel in its dealing 
and its thought borrows the temper and method of its 
neighbors. A noted German proverb runs: u Wiees sich 
Christelt, so Juedelt es sich " — " As the Christian tone is, 
the Jewish tone will be." The direction of the Judaism 
can be judged from the Christianity around it. Where 
orthodox Christianity has sway, Judaism, too, will be 
orthodox ; where Rationalism is stronger, Judaism will be 
rationalistic. 

This distinction is even shown by Jewish writers in their 
classification of the Biblical books. The Law is special ; 
the Prophets are general. The Levitical precepts are par- 
ticular ; the Psalms are universal. The Pentateuch is a 
religion for one people ; the other writings are a religion 
for all peoples. And a distinction is even made in the 
Law itself, as some parts of it are shown to be special, 
while others are shown to be general ; the priestly regula- 
tions only valid for Jews, the decalogue also for Gentiles. 
Too much stress may be laid upon these differences, for 
there are certainly passages of the Psalms and Prophets 
as intensely special and Jewish as anything in the books 
of the Torah. But the contradiction of Jewish particular- 
ity and universalism remains a fact, which it is impossible 



CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JEWS. 4*9 

to deny or to neglect. The Jew has always a double 
nationality, — that of his own blood and heritage, and that 
of the people with whom his lot is cast. His real home is 
the earth anywhere ; and yet his other home is always that 
happy land which God gave to his fathers, and which 
holds the graves of his Prophets and his Patriarchs. 

2. Equally marked in the character of the Jewish race 
are the contrasted qualities of enthusiasm and sagacity. 
On one side the Jew is extravagant, while on the other he 
is keen, careful, and close in his scrutiny. He loves 
hyperbole ; and the round and exaggerated numbers of 
the Biblical stories are as common in the familiar speech 
of the modern Hebrews as in the time of Saul or Joshua. 
The Jew is sensitive to emotions, — breaks into rapture 
over fine music, over lyric verse, over ardent sentiment ; is 
moved easily to joy or grief, and has no bound to his ex- 
pression of feeling. In his praise or in his blame he uses 
strong language ; loves vehemently, and hates vehemently. 
His heart speaks in his look and gesture, and his whole 
frame is eloquent. All branches of the Semitic race, the 
Arabs as much as the Jews, have this demonstrative man- 
ner, this show of earnestness, in all that they say or do. 
They work with heart and soul and mind and strength. 
The Jew seems in all that he says or does to remember the 
phrase of his first commandment. There is nothing 
languid in his movement. Even when his body is weak 
his step is quick. Even when his eye is dim its glance is 
rapid. Even when his voice is broken there is no drawl 
in it. He talks large, in grandiose style, though he may 
dwell in a cellar. The poetry of the Hebrews has no 
metre, no rules of quantity or rhythm, but swells with its 
theme ; and it expresses the spirit of the people, which 
has no limit to its sentiment, whether of wonder or grief. 
The Jew prefers high colors, as well in feeling as in dress, 
and delights more in tragedy than in comedy. He can 
laugh on occasion, but weeping is more natural to him, and 
lamentation in his heritage. The pastime of the Jews in 
Jerusalem is their weekly wail before the sacred stones of 
the ruined Temple ; this wail to them is what a bull-fight 
is to a Spaniard, or a horse-race to an Englishman. 
Goethe calls the Hebrew language "pathetic"; it were 



42 o CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JEWS. 

more accurate to call the spirit of the race pathetic. In 
all the writings of Jews, romance, or song, or drama, or 
opera, there is a sad tone, a deep melancholy, even when 
the talk is of common things. A Jewish author may be 
affected, stilted, fantastic, prolix in his extravagances, but 
he is not dull or dry. His writing has glow, even when it 
is the report of finance or the narrative of a journey. One 
may not fully trust it, but it wins sympathy by its gushing 
tone. The Jews write admirable letters. Their money- 
changers can make, like women, the merest trifles interest- 
ing by much fervor of phrase. This is a characteristic of 
the race which no one can mistake. 

But to match this is their equal sagacity, what might 
perhaps better be called their shrewdness or sharps ighted- 
ness. Is there any keener race on the face of the earth, 
any race less drawn away from reason by sympathies, more 
exact to judge, more clear in vision, and more cautious 
in conclusion ? With all those swelling phrases, with all 
those tearful looks of wonder and sadness, with all that 
pathos of soul, the Jew looks at things as they are, takes 
facts as he finds them, and will not be led away by imagin- 
ation. He has none of the credulity which is apt to go 
with enthusiasm. He believes only what he sees, and he 
acts from sound reasons. No man is less willing to take 
the bare word of others, or to take anything on trust. He 
must see into everything that he believes, — into the propo- 
sitions of science as much as into the motives of men. 
Ardent as is his manner, there is caution in his glance. 
He is on guard against some secret design ; he seems to 
read something in the soul of the man who talks with him 
which does not appear in the word or look. The ancient 
Hebrews had to use that sharp sight in reading their 
sacred books, where there were no signs of vowels, and 
the right sound of the words was not easy to see at once. 
A Jew who reads his Bible without the aid of the Masora 
has constantly to "judge" in his pronunciation of the 
syllables. This shrewdness of the race appears not only 
in their sharp bargains, their transactions in Rag Fair, and 
on the Exchange, but in their love for verbal subtleties, 
for puns and puzzles. The Talmud, which holds their 
character as much as their wisdom, is at once a collection 



> CHARACTEBISTICS OF THE JEWS. 421 

of wild fancies and of shrewd aphorisms, of imaginations 
transcending experience, and of quaint sayings coming 
from microscopic studies. The Jews prefer visions to 
moralizing, and are not lovers of syllogisms. They will 
"jump at conclusions" when they can, but they are quite 
sure of their distance and their footing before they make 
the leap. They are not loose reasoners, and they use the 
French point more than the German period. Jewish ex- 
travagance is not an expansion of the argument, but a dis- 
play of light around it — a luminous atmosphere around a 
central core, like the light around the sun. The Jew loves 
to put the truth into a keen question. He is as Socratic 
as the Yankee. His queries are crushing and decisive, 
and he asks them, not for information, but as the utterance 
of an undeniable verdict. All the senses of the Jew are 
alert and active. He is watching and listening, even when 
he seems to be negligent or absorbed in his own thought. 
His highest rapture never carries him away from scrutiny 
of what is around him. 

3. A third contrast in the character of the Jewish race 
is that of stable and progressive ; or. to use the larger 
epithets of our time, co?iservative and radical. The Jew 
holds fast to traditions, yet is inquisitive of novelties and 
ready to seize inventions. He prides himself upon his 
ancient Law which has outlived the laws of civilized lands ; 
boasts that he belongs to the oldest time by the statutes 
which he obeys, and the customs which he keeps ; that he 
eats and drinks, works and prays, according to the teach- 
ing of holy men of old ; his glory is in the consistency of 
the present way with the former rule. Even the most 
radical Jew prizes a sort of conservatism, and has a respect 
for antiquity which no speculations can overthrow. He 
always feels that his faith is well founded, that there is 
something solid under him, that his feet are upon the rock, 
and that if he changes he is not blown about by the wind. 
He may give up many things which the fathers believed, 
may condense and expurgate the mass of his traditions ; 
but in the process he only makes their outline clearer and 
their essence more substantial. He may use for practical 
ends the dialects of the Gentile peoples, but his own divine 
language remains. The Hebrew is not corrupted, but is 



422 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JEWS. 

as pure in the synagogue to-day as it was in the Temple in 
Jerusalem. The Romaic Greek of modern Athens, with 
all the restorations of modern scholars, is quite another 
thing from the Greek of Thucydides or Plato. The Latin 
of the Catholic schools, mediaeval and monkish, is not the 
Latin of Seneca or of Tully. But the Hebrew which the 
Israelite children hear in Holland and Poland and Mexico 
and Morocco is just as pure as the Hebrew that was heard 
in Samuel's schools of the prophets. This sacred lan- 
guage is fixed, and no improvement will be allowed in it. 

And there is no prominent race in any civilized land 
which keeps so much of antiquity in their life as the Jews. 
The Basques of the Pyrenees, the Celts of Brittany, the 
Finns and the Lapps, and a few other small tribes of 
Europe, keep very ancient customs, and have the signs of 
a prehistoric time. But these tribes are insignificant, and 
are rapidly dying out; while the Jews, with customs still 
older, are flourishing and increasing, and are a strong force 
in the world. In the flux and confusion of modern agita- 
tions, the Jews show something stable. The claim of the 
Catholic Church for its doctrine is illustrated in the spirit 
of this people. They worship ancestors almost as much 
as the Chinese. English and Spanish pedigrees are short 
compared with those of the poorest sons of Israel. The 
most ancient proverbs enter into the common speech, — 
are the daily discourse and the permanent wisdom of the 
family. Even when Jewish sermons are bold in criticisms 
and denials, they are full of the sacred phrases. Jewish 
stories seem to recall the hills and the streams, the vines 
and the flocks, of the Canaan beloved, even though the 
scene be laid in other lands. In all that one reads about 
this race, the impression of stability is constant; every 
Israelite seems in some sense to realize the legend of the 
"wandering Jew," holding to life over the changes of 
empires and ages. The very children of the race look 
old, as if they belonged to the past more than they belong 
to the present. 

And yet development and growth have always marked 
this Jewish race, as they do to-day. The Pharisaism of 
Herod's time was an improvement upon the Ritualism of 
Solomon's time. The Babylonish Talmud improved as 



CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JEWS. 423 

much as it enlarged the Jerusalem Talmud. The Jews 
have had their sects as well as the Christians — -their 
inquirers, their freethinkers. The Caraites keep their 
synagogue still, as they have for more than a thousand 
years. The history of Jewish literature seems to show an 
ardor for novelties, a quick ear for new revelations. If 
the Jew feels that his feet are upon the rock, his eye and 
his hand are free, and his longing is not satisfied by his 
solid foundation. He has an insatiate and irrepressible 
curiosity. " Prove all things " was the word of a Jew, 
though he coupled with it the other precept, " Hold fast 
what is good." This progressive spirit is seen in the way 
in which the Jews handle their Law. They by no means 
treat this as a fetish, to be shrined, and ignorantly wor- 
shipped. They are perpetually examining it, making 
comments upon it, prying into it, bringing it into new 
relations. No law is more manipulated. It is elastic in 
their use, and each Rabbin is skillful to make it prove his 
own theories. The Law is the same as it was in Gamaliel's 
synagogue, but its exposition is new, and of the nineteenth 
century. In fact, that Messianic hope, which looks for- 
ward and not backward, compels the Jew to be in some 
sense a radical. One who seeks a better country, a new 
glory, a restoration and renovation, cannot be content 
with present things. The very restlessness of this for- 
ward-looking means progress. An unsatisfied race must 
be an improving race. And every Jew must believe in 
progress, not only as he hopes for a kingdom to come, but 
as he compares the condition of his people now with their 
condition a hundred, or a thousand, or even two thousand, 
years ago. The fortunes of the race exemplify the doc- 
trine of progress, as they have risen to the honors of the 
courts of kings, and hold in their hand the wealth of the 
nations. 

4. Another evident contrast in the character of the Jews 
is that of subjective and objective, or to use a less scholastic 
phrase, of selfishness and generosity. The Jew is an egotist, 
and never loses his personality, never forgets himself, 
always looks out for his own interest. As Jellinek says, 
the world is his anvil, while he is the hammer. He cares 
for his own fortune, his own comfort, his own destiny. He 



424 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JEWS. 

is not content to be a part of the universe, a fraction ; he 
must be the centre, the ruler, the shaping influence in the 
surrounding circumstances. He is very jealous of his 
freedom and his rights, and will not give these up. He 
has no love for abstractions, or for truth separate from 
personal gain. He does not take kindly to organizations 
in which his individuality is compromised or merged. As 
artisan, or merchant, or banker, he prefers to be untram- 
meled, and not to be bound by the rules of any guild. If 
he joins an association, the obligations hold lightly upon 
him, and a slight cause will break them. The clannishness 
of the Jews in questions of race by no means implies the 
loss of individuality in the general interest of the whole. 
There are jealousies, rivalries, and divisions enough within 
this apparent union. Of each other, the Jews are often 
unmerciful critics. Their spirit is essentially aristocratic ; 
each one is inclined to think himself superior to the rest, 
and to overrate his importance, and to get recognition of 
personal worth. No people make more use of the first 
personal pronoun ; no one is more unwilling than the Jew 
to lose credit for his work, or have another take his proper 
praise. They do not write anonymously. The thing done 
is good to the man because he has done it. 

This Jewish egotism is shown in some peculiarities of 
their ancient tongue. For the pronoun " I," the Hebrew 
has two forms. For the pronoun " we," three forms. The 
word " self " has several equivalents. Words expressing 
subjective qualities are rich in synonyms. There are 
twelve words which mean to "think," twelve words which 
mean to " hide," eighteen words which mean to " see," 
twenty-one words which mean to " speak ; " while to 
" speak " and to " think " can be expressed by the same 
word. In everything which belongs to personality, to 
individuality, the Hebrew language is redundant. On the 
other hand, the language is poor in conjunctions, in words 
which seem to join men to the men or things around them. 
And this linguistic peculiarity is seen in the literature of 
the Jews, which deals with personal fortunes more than 
with general ideas. The Jew is interested in the illustra- 
tion of his own experience, and cares little for mere phil- 
osophy. That slur of the wise Preacher upon mere wisdom 



CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JEWS. 425 

suits the Hebrew people still, and they have contempt for 
metaphysical problems. The Hebrew would know about 
himself, when he came, what he is, and what will become 
of him, and has not much heed of the philosophy of other 
things. He rejects, however, most energetically, the 
materialist theory of mind as the product of mere sensa- 
tion, — a sheet of paper on which the senses inscribe all 
that is written. The Jews prefer a philosophy which is 
bound up in the events of a human life. 

Other illustrations might be given of this egotism of the 
Jews, such as the imputation in debate with rivals of 
personal motives, or the tendency to find the ideas of 
Gentile writers in their own books, which sometimes 
betrays them into anachronisms. But the objective charac- 
ter of the Jews, their unselfishness, is equally marked. 
First, there is their family love, the love of parents with 
children, of brothers with sisters, as strong now as in the 
days of the patriarchs. The finest style of family life is 
seen in Jewish households. Then there is their hospi- 
tality, the virtue of an Israelite as much as of an Ishmael- 
ite. Then there is their spirit of compassion for the poor 
and suffering. No people care so well for those of their 
race who are sick or old or wretched as the Jews. The 
synagogue is not more important than the hospital. 
Christian mercy is only borrowed from the Jewish virtue, 
emphatically enjoined in the Sacred Books. There are no 
Jewish beggars, not only because the people are too proud 
to beg, but because the want of the "poor is met so well by 
brotherly kindness. 

And the objective character of the Jews appears in their 
care for the opinion of other races about them. They are 
not self-sufficient, though they are self-conscious. They 
are gregarious, too; they like to live in neighborhoods, 
and in the neighborhood of other peoples. History tells 
us of no Jewish hermits, and the worst curse upon a Jew 
is that which sends him away from his kind. They go 
away only as they are driven, and their whole exile is a 
season of complaining. They have not the spirit of 
pioneers, and cannot be alone with Nature. Jews do not 
like to live in communities where there are no Gentiles. 
They come back to Christian and Moslem cities rather 



426 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JEWS. 

than build cities of their own, even when they have ample 
means to do this. They cling to something outside of 
themselves, and thrive best when they deal habitually with 
alien races. They covet the good-will of others when they 
have no need of help or patronage. 

5. Another contrast in the Jewish character is that of 
pride and humility. Their egotism is accompanied by an 
unbounded national pride. The Jew is proud of his blood, 
of his lineage, of his long history, of his divine right, 
proud that his people are the chosen people of God. He 
is even proud of his persecutions, proud that his race have 
endured such hardness, and yet have kept their purity of 
faith and their identity of life. The Arab vagabond, who 
wears the green turban, is more lordly in his assumption 
than any Pacha, for he has Mohammed for his ancestor. 
And the Jew in Amsterdam or Frankfort can despise the 
sleek burghers who pity him, for he has Abraham for his 
father, while they are men of yesterday. That the Jews 
do not beg, comes largely from this national pride; they 
are afraid and ashamed to disgrace their hereditary dignity. 
Exacting as a creditor, compelling payment of all that is 
" nominated in the bond," the Jew asks no favors, and 
would rather seem to do them than to ask them. The 
Israelite pawnbroker, who loans on a pledge of five times 
the value of his loan, with an interest of twenty or of forty 
per cent., keeps the air of one who is conferring a gift. 
Every Jew is more or less a Pharisee in this national 
pride. 

But on the other hand, in outward appearance, the Jew 
is the humblest of men. His manner is supple and defer- 
ent. His gait is bent and shuffling. He keeps out of the 
way of others, and gives them the path. His address is 
mild, insinuating, full of apologies, excuses, protests of 
unworthiness. He is ready to accommodate, and take the 
lowest seat. In public places he keeps in the background. 
He walks with downcast look, like the publican in the 
parable. Arrogant as he may be in heart, he is respectful 
in manner • his arrogance has no noisy boast. Shylock 
may despise Antonio as " a fawning publican," but to a 
looker-on, Shylock fawns and apologizes much more than 
the Christian merchant. The words are humble, though 



CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JEWS. 427 

they may hold a latent satire. A haughty Jew is a rare 
phenomenon. The wealthy banker, who handles his mil- 
lions in London, and ranks with nobles of the realm, 
is as meek in address as the servile money-changer in 
Cairo, who sits at the parting of the ways. The Jew may 
feel like a lord in the heritage of God in which he has the 
right of the first born, but his very nobility constrains him 
in his intercourse with men to take the servant's place. 
Jesus was never truer to his nation's spirit than when he 
said to his followers : "Let him among you that would be 
greatest be your servant." That is the Jewish way of 
gaining position, not in the offensive style of command, 
but in a " voluntary humiliation," in taking the servant's 
place, in seeming modesty. One may notice in the cities 
that the Hebrew tradesmen make much less parade in 
their signs and their announcements than the Christian 
tradesmen, do not hang flags across the streets, or put 
forth monstrous placards. The largest operators are the 
least ostentatious. The proud race of Israel, with their 
pedigree of four thousand years, humble themselves before 
the Gentiles who have no ancestry. 

6. And equally marked in the Jewish character, is the 
contrast of passion and patie?ice. While " sufferance is the 
badge of all the tribe," no race is quicker to take offence, 
and to show anger in look and gesture. The wrath of 
Shylock, learning his daughter's disgrace and flight, is the 
sign of an enduring trait in his race. A rash humor runs 
in their blood. They may " pocket the insult," but they 
feel it, and they show that they feel it. Anger is one of 
their national passions, and they share it with their Jeho- 
vah, whose wrath is real, though it abates so readily. In 
the Jewish ethics, anger is not a sin ; even the Christian 
Apostle excused it as a natural impulse. The enthusiasm 
of the race shows itself often in this practical fashion, and 
even policy or fear cannot always suppress the hot rage 
which was royal in the wrath of Saul or Moses. In the 
Jewish quarters of European cities an impression is left 
upon the mind of the foreign visitor of perpetual disputing ; 
the language and gesture are those of Billingsgate, and 
one looks to see a speedy war of blows follow the war of 
sharp words. In Jerusalem, to-day, the Sephardim speak 



428 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JEWS. 

of the Ashkenazim in tones which are quite other than 
kindly. A Jew in whose heart there were no hatreds, no 
vexing wrath, would not be true to his hereditary temper, 
would deny the gift of his dark-eyed mother. Much of 
his joy comes in the indulgence of his angers ; this gives 
vitality to his blood, and arrests physical decay. Fagin, 
in the Dickens story, relieves himself in his avarice and 
his falsehood by explosions of wrath upon the instruments 
of his cunning. The chief artistic defect in the character 
of Nathan the Wise is that this passion is wanting, that 
the noble man never gives way to indignation, not only 
bears injustice, but bears it with so much composure. He 
is too much of a philosopher to be a genuine Jew. Elijah, 
denouncing Ahab and Jezebel ; Paul, calling Ananias a 
whited wall, forgetting in his wrath the High Priest's 
dignity, are more accurate types of the Jewish character 
than the calm sage of the German drama, who not only 
suppresses his anger, but seems never to feel it. 

Yet over against this passion see the infinite patience of 
the race. To no people on the earth so much as this is 
the epithet "long-suffering" rightly applied. They have 
won it by centuries of oppression. If patience were not 
the virtue of the fathers, it certainly would be the virtue of 
the children. The wise Koheleth said that " the patient 
in spirit is better than the proud in spirit," and the wiser 
son of Sirach exalts this virtue. The proverbs which 
commend patience are Hebrew in their origin. The Dutch 
learned their familiar sentence, " Geduld gaat boven geleerd- 
heid" — • " patience goes beyond learning," — from the Jews 
who dwelt in their land. The special grace of Job is the 
national boast of the Hebrews. They need no exhorta- 
tion to labor and to wait, for there is nothing which they 
cannot bear, and have not borne ; insults, frauds, false- 
hoods, blows, every kind of injustice, are all pait of their 
long training in suffering and patience. The duty now is 
an instinct as much as a principle. The Jew, in sadness 
of soul, may cry, " How long, O Lord, how long ? " Yet 
he will endure and not faint, though the Lord should still 
hold back for a thousand years. 

7. The next pair of contrasted traits to be noted in the 
Jewish character are lavishness and economy. The second 



CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JEWS. 429 

of these is so much brought out in novels and plays that it 
seems almost a paradox to speak of Jewish luxury. Yet 
there is no race on the earth more given to luxuries than 
the Hebrew. We find this in the invectives of the 
prophets against the feasts of men and the dresses of 
women. In the time of Jesus, indeed, there was an 
ascetic sect, and his forerunner came crying in the desert 
in a camel's-hair cloak and a leathern girdle, and feeding 
on mean food. But for all that, asceticism was not in the 
temper of Israel, and the Essenes were eccentric, with but 
small influence on the national character. The modern 
Jew is certainly not ascetic. He loves show, he fills his 
house with fine furniture, and follows close, where he does 
not lead, the most extravagant fashion. Not only are the 
daughters of Israel profuse in their jewelry, but the men, 
too, wear rings upon their fingers, and diamonds in their 
bosoms. A Jew prefers to spend his money for trinkets 
and trappings rather than for books and implements ; he 
may do without the necessaries of life, but he cannot spare 
its luxuries. He must be' very poor not to have some 
special indulgence, something to feast his eyes. Specta- 
cles of all kinds, balls, operas, concerts, find their best 
patrons in the children of Jacob. No conscientious 
scruples restrain them ; and they are willing by their attire 
and their prominence to bear a full part in the show. In 
the days of David and Hezekiah, music and dancing 
entered into the Jewish worship, and no religious prohibi- 
tion hinders this passion, or puts it under ban. The 
luxury of the Jews is not less real that it is so often con- 
cealed from the vulgar gaze. The outside of the Jewish 
houses in Damascus is blank and forbidding; the walls are 
sodden and gray, and weeds grow in the crevices. But 
when the doorway is passed and the court-yard is reached, 
there are bright mosaics, and plashing fountains, and 
mirrors in the walls, and damsels in rich attire of colors 
and gold. Solomon, the magnificent, presents the Hebrew 
idea of wisdom ; to have such possessions and displays 
that the world shall look on with envy and wonder. The 
Jew banker, with his four-in-hand equipage on the avenue 
in Newport, represents fairly the luxury of his race. 

To dwell on the economy of the Jews, which balances 



43 o CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JEWS. 

their luxury, would simply repeat the universal prejudice. 
" As rich as a Jew," is a proverb ; but the common idea is 
that the Jew gets rich more by parsimony than by enter- 
prise ; that he lays up his money while he uses it. The 
traditional Jew of history and romance is the miser, clutch- 
ing his gold, hiding his gains, rejoicing in his hoards, wast- 
ing nothing. His congenial trades are those in which there 
is no loss of substance, such as money-changing ; or in 
which refuse is gathered and used, in cloth or in metal. 
Doubtless this Jewish habit is greatly exaggerated. Japhet 
has its misers as much as the race of Shem. The Scot is 
as canny in turning a penny as an Israelite of pure blood ; 
and the sons of Abraham find their match in saving among 
the sons of the Puritans. The Jew is sometimes cheated 
by the Yankee. Nevertheless, the Jews are a saving folk, 
and seldom spend more than they have or more than they 
earn. The luxury is within the limit of their fortune. The 
prodigal son is an exception in their families, and the 
young Hebrew goes to the far country more to trade and ac- 
cumulate than to waste his substance in riotous living. For 
this race the Gentile rule of fortunes squandered in the 
second or third generation is not valid ; the thrift is trans- 
mitted, and the hoards are increased in the new genera- 
tions. Left to themselves, and not hampered by disabilities 
or vexed by persecutions, the Jews are sure to grow rich ; 
and they will grow rich, even when they are vexed and op- 
pressed. All their reading of the cynical sentences of the 
Preacher about the vanity of riches, of the prayer of Agur 
for the just mean of property, cannot weaken their desire to 
lay up store of earthly treasure. They are hard-money men, 
and they believe in coin as the one thing substantial, if 
not the one thing needful. Their aristocracy is also a plu- 
tocracy, like the English, and the neglect to use the occa- 
sion of adding to their fortune is a foolish blunder, if not 
an unpardonable sin. 

8. One more contrast in the Jewish character must be 
mentioned, — -of dogmatism and tolerance. On one side the 
Jews are intensely dogmatic. They insist that their own 
religion is the best, the saving religion ; that it is revealed 
and divine ; that it came from God, and has a sanction 
which no other can have. They know that they are right. 



CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JEWS. 431 

Their doctrine is positive. They have no questions, no 
exceptions, no hesitation in their assertion, no qualifica- 
tions. Their only apology for their faith is in the works of 
Philo. Neither for the foundation nor for the substance of 
his belief does the Jew seek outside arguments, " reasons 
for believing." The reason and the argument are in the 
faith itself. It is almost as self-evident to him as a mathe- 
matical axiom. In every Jewish treatise or history this 
sturdy dogmatism appears, not weakened by any doubt, 
but strict and outspoken. The controversy is not timid, 
but aggressive. Outnumbered twenty-fold as the Jew is 
in his dispute with united Christendom, he is as brave and 
confident before this vast force, in this unequal strife, as 
David was before Goliath. He is a zealot, as ardent as any 
of the ancient sect, though he is more prudent than the zeal- 
ots who destroyed the kingdom in their zeal for the Law 
and Prophets. 

And yet, with all this dogmatism, the Jewish race is tol- 
erant, and practices toleration more frankly than any Chris- 
tian sect. It never molests other religions ; has no spirit 
of propagandism ; uses no arts of sectarian increase. It lets 
other races get salvation in their own way. It may be 
said that such charity is easy and politic for a race which 
has no power to persecute, which is hopelessly inferior in 
force ; and that no one knows what the Jews would do in 
a changed situation, and with a majority on their side. 
But they never were a proselyting people, even in the day 
of their strong empire ; and the assertion of Keim that 
they were, is not justified by their authentic annals. Solo- 
mon did not compel his subjects or his captives to worship 
Jehovah; on the contrary, he left the natives around him 
to their own gods, and even gave these gods room and wel- 
come upon the hills of Judea. There is no evidence that 
he converted the Queen of Sheba to the faith of Israel, or 
sent her home to give to her people the sacrifices of Mo- 
riah, or the laws of Sinai. The Jews receive only volun- 
tary converts, and use no pleading or threatening to gain 
them. They leave other sects to stand or fall, each by its 
own light, and to its own master. The bigotry which is 
the sin of so many of our Christian journals is not con- 
spicuous in what the Jewish journals say of the Christian 



432 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JEWS. 

sects. They allow to others the freedom which they claim 
for themselves. If they do not answer cursing with bless- 
ing, they have no actual anathemas. They let their foes 
alone. The Jew has his own Sabbath, but he does not 
grudge to the Moslem or to the Christian their sacred days, 
the Friday or the Sunday, the first or the sixth day of the 
week. He does not wish them to intrude in his house, 
but in their own houses they may act their pleasure. 

These evident contrasts in the character of the Jewish 
race seem to prove to its loyal children, such as Rabbi Jel- 
linek, that it holds the future of human destiny ; that it is 
the reconciling race which shall fulfill the prophecy of 
joining the lion and the lamb, and shall make the synthesis 
of the opposites in custom and faith. More interesting to 
the Jews even than their former story, so full of providence 
and deliverance, and triumph, comfort in captivity, restora- 
tion after sorrows, is the question of their future destiny. 
In the heart of the people there is a lasting confidence 
that a new Jerusalem better than the old shall come ; and 
that the glory of the former record shall be pale in the 
brightness of the coming kingdom. But where and how 
shall this kingdom come ? Shall it be literal restoration 
to the ancient land so long desolate, a new throne on the 
hill of the Palace and the Temple, a gathering of the 
people from all the lands of the Gentiles to the narrow 
region which was so "goodly" to the eyes of their fathers? 
This crude Messianic hope still clings in the longings of 
the ignorant ; and in the synagogue-prayer that the 
Redeemer may soon come to Zion, they seem to see the 
thronging and jubilant pilgrimage back to the deserted 
seats. But intelligent Jews have ceased to expect or wish 
for any such literal return. They look for a spiritual 
kingdom as broad as the world, and not fixed in any land 
or on any hill. The new temple will not be on Gerizim or 
in Jerusalem, but in the hearts of men. ' The triumph of 
their race is not to be in its concentration apart, but 
in its influence in moulding the characters and purifying 
the faith of other races. The joy of the Jews now is 
in the thought that they are as leaven in the civilization 
of men, and that the best human things, the highest 
moral and religious ideas, come through them and their 



CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JEWS. 433 

ancient Law. They see the Messiah's advent in the 
recognition which they are gaining, in the respect for 
their position, in the influence of their industry, their 
genius, and their hope. Their kingdom comes as they 
sustain the cheer and hinder the despair of the world 
around them. While they would hold their purity of 
blood and of race, they have no wish to draw back from 
that contact with the Gentiles, which has so enlarged the 
dominion of their ideas, and given them the heathen for 
inheritance. The Jewish wise men now teach that the 
mission of their race is to do for the whole earth what it 
did for Canaan after its years of wandering, — to subdue 
opposing forces, to civilize and to bless. Everywhere they 
are dropping what is only narrow and technical, and insist- 
ing more upon the broad and universal part of the creed. 
Unlike the Roman church, which stands immovable in the 
progress of the ages, learning nothing from the world's 
wisdom, and only iterating the old formulas, the Jewish 
wisdom moves with the age, and adapts itself to the world's 
spirit. This race belongs to the nineteenth century as 
much as young Germany, or young France, or young 
America. It springs to the new work of opening the 
resources of continents, and quickening the social forces. 
It is all alive with interest in the things which are present, 
and has small care for mere recollection of former days. 
A few Jews go off to Jerusalem with the pious purpose of 
finding a grave with their fathers. But no Jew, who has 
the sense of a living soul within him, or of a work in his 
own age, wishes a home in that land of graves. He finds 
his home close to his place of labor, and he builds his 
temple there, solid and visible, to stand as long as any 
religious house. The avenues of flourishing cities are to 
him more charming than the lanes of Zion, where the 
holy stones have long been trodden under the feet of men. 
There is more of Jerusalem where he can see the evident 
strength of his race, than where he can only read its dim 
and fading legend. Now that the Jew has become a man 
among men, a citizen of the world, and not its outcast, he 
does not seek the city where his outcast state is inevitably 
brought to his remembrance. When Israel was hated and 
spurned, it might wish to find a home in its former land of 
28 



434 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JEWS. 

rest. But now that the burden is lifted off, now that it is 
free from its task-master, it is better satisfied with the new 
privilege which the Lord has given, and finds in its disper- 
sion that it inherits the earth in a wider sense than was 
meant by the seers when they spoke its destiny and its 
future glory. 



CHRISTIANITF THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION. 435 



XVIII, 

CHRISTIANITY THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION. 

Acts iv. 12. — "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is 
none other name given among men whereby we must be saved." 

Peter, in this answer to the rulers and elders, speaks 
not so much of spiritual as of physical salvation. The 
cripple at the gate was made whole, he says, by the power 
of the risen Christ ; and all cures of that kind can be 
wrought by that power and that name, and not by any 
lower skill or incantation. The healing of diseases is in 
the influence of him who by the spirit of God had been 
made superior to physical accidents and master of phys- 
ical laws. Peter does not mean to say that only Christ 
can give light to men, or make them wise and happy, but 
that he only can realize the prophetic promise of the 
Messiah's kingdom, in which things which seem impossi- 
ble shall be proved real, and ills of the flesh shall yield to 
the force of the spirit. Nor does he in this saying include 
any large survey of the world beyond the Sacred Land. 
He does not say that the heathen of Africa or Asia, of 
whom he knew nothing, can have no other salvation, spir- 
itual or physical, than that which comes through Jesus of 
Nazareth. The motive of the modern missionary move- 
ment cannot be drawn from the literal intent of the Apos- 
tle's word. It may be true, and we may be glad to be- 
lieve, that the name of Jesus is the saving name for every 
kindred, tongue and nation, but the Apostle does not say 
so in this answer to the rulers in Jerusalem. He simply 
tells them that no one of the great names which they 
know; no name of rabbi, or scribe, or prophet, or priest; 
no name which is respectable among them, or has ever 
been used in their assemblies, has such power as the 
name of him whom they have crucified ; that the Jesus 



436 CHRISTIANITY THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION. 

whom they have rejected, have mocked, have outraged, 
have slain, lives still, in spite of them, and lives with a 
force and a grace stronger than all their arts, and evident 
to their eyes, with a force which they cannot deny or gain- 
say, and of which they need the aid and blessing. 

But what Peter claimed for the physical power of Jesus 
there in Judea, the followers of Jesus claim now for his 
spiritual power everywhere. They say that he is Saviour 
of the world from its ills and sins, in the actual scope 
and character of his Gospel, if not in its first design. 
They insist that this name is the only universal name, 
eminent above all others, which ought to stand for a uni- 
versal religion, and which will at some time or other stand 
for a universal religion. They affirm that Christianity, 
the religion of Jesus, ought to be the religion of the whole 
world, and that the world would anywhere be better for 
having this religion ; that the best religions of the heathen 
are inferior to this ; that no religion is so well adapted to 
the needs of men ; that no other religion can be univer- 
sal. Allowing, as every intelligent man must allow, that 
there is good in all religions, and that the rudest and 
harshest faiths have some saving influence, the followers 
of Jesus still maintain that there is more good in the 
Christian religion, and that this contains all the grace of 
the heathen religions and more which they do not contain. 
It is not at all necessary for those who hold that the Gos- 
pel of Christ is a universal religion, to insist that those 
who have it not, who do not know, or even who reject, the 
name of the Redeemer, are alien from God and the victims 
of his wrath ; that the world of torment is peopled by 
swarming millions who have died without confession of 
this name. That there are local religions, national re- 
ligions, very ancient, very strong in their hold, very salu- 
tary in their quickening of reverence and their restraint 
upon wickedness, is willingly admitted by intelligent men, 
even while they say that Christianity is better and ought 
to have sway above these local and national religions. 
Not bigotry alone holds the grand idea of the universal 
reign of Christ. One may exult in the broad harmonies 
of the great German master of symphony, without deny- 
ing the sweetness of lesser melodies or the merit of infe- 
rior masters. 



CHRISTIANITY THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION. 437 

That Christianity, in any of its existing schemes or 
dogmatic statements, is likely to become the religion of 
the whole world, no wise man can believe. The Roman 
Catholic Church makes converts still among the heathen, 
as it has made them for more than a thousand years. 
Its rites resemble the heathen rites, and no very great 
change is required of those who bow down to wood and 
stone when Rome brings in her lighted altars and her 
images of the saints. Yet it is preposterous to suppose 
that the creed of St. Augustine or the creed of Pope 
Pius will ever be the rule of faith for the whole human 
race. The Calvinist missionaries of England and Amer- 
ica continue to preach in India and China, and in the 
Isles of the Sea, but they find only few adherents among 
the blinded worshippers who live and die in those popu- 
lous lands. No sensible man can believe that the whole 
world will ever belong to the Congregational or the Presby- 
terian Church. The Church of England makes large 
claim, and gains a place in some lands that own no alle- 
giance to the English Queen ; yet who is enthusiastic 
enough to imagine the whole race of man reading from 
the English prayer-book, or confessing the thirty-nine arti- 
cles ? No existing creed of Christianity, no existing sect, 
no form in which faith is stated, can be taken for the 
Gospel of final supreme dominion. The simplest and most 
rational statements are too technical for a universal relig- 
ion. Christ may be the prevailing name, but not the 
Christ which any human systems have moulded or imag- 
ined, whether on earth or in heaven. The spirit of Chris- 
tianity, and not its form, makes it universal. 

A reason why some thinkers of our time strangely deny 
the value of the Christian Gospel, and make the fantastic 
and impossible effort to stand outside of it in a Christian 
land, is that they persist in confounding the religion itself 
with the forms in which it has been fastened, and think 
that it must always be encased in these forms and can 
never live separate from them. Christianity, they tell us, 
means the old ecclesiastical confession of Jesus as very 
God, and if you cannot take that, you must let Christian- 
ity go. Salvation by Christ can only be in this church 
method ; and as the church method can never be the world 



43 s CHRISTIANITY THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION. 



method, Christianity must, with all its diffusion, and with 
all the zeal of its preachers, be a partial and temporary 
religion, which men, even in so-called Christian lands, may 
outgrow. You may see men educated in our churches and 
religious schools, who frankly tell you that the Christian 
religion has clone for them all that it can do ; that they 
have got beyond it ; that it seems to them limited and nar- 
row, and that they will no longer stay in its bondage, 
And they argue that a religion cannot be universal which 
has not even power to hold its own children. That the 
Gospel of Chris- is rejected by those to whom it has been 
carefully taught, is reason for denying that it will be 
accepted outside of its own circle. They say that more 
become heathen at home in their unbelief than all the 
heathen who are converted abroad. The Christian religion 
is only one of the religions of the world, good in some 
things, but not perfect, with its weak points as well as its 
strong points, suited to one class of men and one kind of 
civilization, only one phenomenon of a varied and hetero- 
geneous religious life. They cannot tell what the universal 
religion is or will be, but they are confident that it will be 
nothing so special as Christianity, and nothing that has 
the name of any man, whether the human name or the 
official name. The mistake of their position is in fasten- 
ing the religion itself to its historic form, in making the 
Church to be the visible house, instead of the company of 
invisible souls, in allowing the claim of the religious sys- 
tem to represent and conclude all of the religious life. If 
Christianity is all in any form in which it is now, or ever 
has been embodied, it certainly cannot cover the earth as 
the waters cover the sea. Its spread will only be in de- 
tached masses, with wide chasms, and its triumph will be 
in fortresses set at intervals, which, strong as they may be, 
will always exclude more than they take in. Christianity 
will not be a universal religion merely as one or many of 
the Churches establisli missionary stations in all lands, 
because at some time or other one may be able to hear 
the Catholic mass, or the Scotch psalm-singing, or the 
English Litany, or the Methodist prayer, on all shores 
and in all tongues, because there will be no part of the 
world, north or south, ancient or modern, savage or civil- 



CHRISTIANITY THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION. 439 



ized, in which the name of Christ will not be repeated, and 
his religion make some show ; but because it will enter 
into the spirit of all religions and transform them into its 
own likeness. That any form of Christianity that has been 
known since the tragedy of Calvary will become the sub- 
stitute for all the forms and faiths of all the nations is only 
an idle dream, fit to amuse credulous and enthusiastic 
souls. But that the soul of the Christ of God will inform 
and illumine the life of all the nations is the most reason- 
able of all religious hopes. 

i. Let us notice some of the reasons of this hope, some 
of the reasons why Christianity fulfils the idea, and meets 
the demand of a universal religion. The first of these is 
that it addresses itself to all classes, conditions, ranks and 
ages in society, and finds its saints everywhere ; that it is 
in no sense national, peculiar or exclusive. It is a religion 
ior the old and the young, for the wise and the simple, for 
the rich and the poor, for the master and the servant, — 
independent of all circumstance or spiritual state. There 
may be national conditions to which it is not adapted, but 
for individual men and women and children, it is always 
good. Its essential ideas are welcome everywhere. That 
can be said of no other religion and no philosophical sys- 
tem. The sacred books of India and Persia and China, 
the wise books of Greece and Rome, never can find such 
wide favor as the Sermon on the Mount or the records of 
the Evangelists. Exceptional men may prefer other teach- 
ing to the teaching of these simple records, but this pref- 
erence is not ordered by any rule of race or class. The 
testimony to the surpassing value and beauty of the Chris- 
tian religion comes not alone from the devotion of those 
who blindly assent to it, but from the deliberate judgment 
of the wisest men, and even from the judgment of enemies. 
Rousseau wrote its eulogy while he would set up another 
oracle of truth. That it is beyond the mark of actual 
human life almost everywhere does not prove that it is not 
adapted to the condition of men. Every one would like 
to live up to it. No one pretends to live beyond it. Even 
those who reject the Gospel do not pretend that they are 
better or happier than they would be if they lived up to its 
precepts. Christianity had its cradle in Judea, and his- 



44° CHRISTIANITY THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION. 

torically was born of a very close and national religion ; 
yet it is in no sense a Jewish religion, and the Jews claim 
no property in it. It suits the blood of the artistic Greek, 
of the arbitrary Roman, of the ardent African, as much 
as of the Jew. Lineage and climate make no law of its 
diffusion. The calendar of the Church represents very 
well this wide adaptation of the religion. Its saints and 
heroes, not selected by design to illustrate this idea, but 
chosen from age to age by their personal merit, are seen 
to come from every race and station. Some have been 
humble men, of mean descent and small fortune, while 
others have borne dignities and have filled the seats of the 
teachers. Some have been anchorites, dwelling alone in 
prayer and fasting, while others have been busy in the 
streets of cities, in works of charity and mercy. Some 
have the brow of youth, all radiant with health and life, 
while others show the lines of haggard age, rapt only in 
the vision of the near heaven so long expected. Ambrose 
and Antony, Catherine and Theresa, Louis the King, 
girded with armor, Bernard the Abbot, with the Pastor's 
staff, and the mendicant Francis, barefoot and a beggar^ — 
these and how many more, show us by their union in the 
line that Christianity belongs to no class, and has a word 
and a call for all. Judaism could never become a religion 
for the world, because it has a priestly caste, a set of men 
who own as exclusive right its honors and mysteries, and 
whom the rest must obey. No religion that has a priestly 
caste can ever be universal, whatever its precepts. The 
universal religion must reach the highest and the lowest 
alike, and be as good for one as for all. This Christianity 
is, by the confession alike of friends and foes. This is the 
objection to it made by many : that it is too democratic ; 
that it levels distinctions ; that it confuses social order by 
giving one rule for all. This is its plea, even with its 
creed banner held up in the van of its march, — one salva- 
tion for all, the same law for saint and sinner, one door 
by which all enter in. 

You may plead, indeed, that times arise in the life of 
almost every one, when Christ's teaching is found inade- 
quate to show duty ; that there are difficult cases of con- 
science that the religion is unable to meet ; that it is not 



CHRISTIANITY THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION. 44 1 

in harmony with many natural, permanent, and therefore 
innocent instincts, and that it does not help on that mate- 
rial gain and comfort which is the first need and end of 
man upon the earth. Are there not many who fail to find 
in this religion the solution of the problem of their phys- 
ical life ? It tells them to take no thought for the morrow, 
while they have to take thought for the morrow, else they 
cannot live. It tells them to lay up treasure in heaven, — 
while here they are upon earth, and have this to care for. 
It tells them to trust their brethren, while their brethren 
are actually false and treacherous. It tells them to ren- 
der to Caesar his due, when Caesar is a hard task-master 
and would despoil them of their right. It tells them not 
to fear death, when the fear of death is the best security 
for life. Can a religion be universal which has in it so 
much which is impracticable, so much which is unsuited 
to every actual social state, so much which must be varied 
and modified and explained away ? How much of the 
religion would be left, if all must take only what every one 
can use ? There are Christian ideas which are adapted to 
the Chinese and Hindoos, but are there not ideas which 
must be left out of the preaching if these races are to 
accept it ? If Christianity must be clipped and twisted 
and beaten out to suit the state of men in Christian lands, 
must be warped to the prejudices of rank and wealth and 
dogmatism, or to the exigencies of trade and war, how 
shall it be brought to the more exacting needs of heathen 
lands ? 

This objection has a plausible sound, but is sophistical 
withal. It may best be met by considering what Chris- 
tianity is in its origin and its essence. But we may say in 
passing that an elastic reach and range is not an objection 
to any system. The air is elastic, and may be compressed 
or expanded, modified by vapors or odors, but it is not 
any the less the all-embracing and the all-penetrating 
source of life. The air on the mountain is lighter than 
the air in the valley ; the air on the plain is purer than the 
air in the mine or in the tenement-houses of the city ; but 
it is still air, and better than any compound of the chem- 
ists' art. Water is elastic, and is beaten into wave and 
foam by the freaks of the wind, and yields before the cut- 



442 CHRISTIANITY THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION. 

ting keel; yet it holds no less its majestic flow, and runs 
where the rigid line of lava cannot run. It is a merit of 
Christianity that it will bear so much stretching and twist- 
ing, and yet keep its integrity ; that it has such power of 
self-restoration ; that now, after all these pleas of priests 
and rulers and worldly sophists, after all this false hand- 
ling in the saloon and the market-place, and on the battle- 
field, it still continues to speak of peace and justice, and 
love and forgiveness. 

The wonderful power of the Catholic Church is shown 
in its skill to take advantage of passing issues, to meet all 
emergencies, yet keep its unity throughout all. And it is 
evidence of the universal value of the Christian religion, 
that it will bear so much manipulation, so much expansion 
and contraction, without losing any of its essential ideas, 
and that we can know what it is and was, after all these 
transformations. 

2. But we find another reason for believing that Chris- 
tianity is a universal religion in the humanity of its origin. 
It begins with tangible historical fact — with a human 
biography. Jesus is not, like the gods of the Pagan relig- 
ions, a mythical character, half human, half monstrous, but 
he is a man, born of woman, with a human name, lineage 
and work. The wonderful works which he is recorded to 
have done are not fabulous prodigies, works in the clouds, 
but human offices, the works which come from the wisdom 
of the human mind and the sympathies of the human heart. 
The story of Jesus is everywhere intelligible, and appeals 
to all who have human feeling. If the original record were 
lost, and we had only left the deified Christ of the creeds, 
Jesus might become as vague and legendary as the deified 
heroes of the Pagan mythology. But the records survive, 
and they have been multiplied in such abundance that all 
tribes find access to them. The story of Jesus is the only 
story of a founder of the religion which is ever likely to 
become widely known or widely attractive ; the only story 
of a religious founder which makes its appeal directly to 
the hearts of men. Jesus is the one Saviour of men who 
can be brought into tender personal relations with the 
human soul, and with every human soul ; whom saint and 
sinner, too, can accept as a brother and think of as a 



CHRISTIANITY THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION. 443 

brother in the flesh. The Hindoo can have no such rela- 
tion with the mystical Brahma or the ascetic Buddha, 
avoiding human companionship. The Chinese can have 
no such tender feeling for the o-reat Confucius, exalted by 
his wisdom. Hercules, and Prometheus, and Odin, and 
all the divine men of Pagan lore, are of another kind than 
this Divine Man, whose best divinity was in his perfect 
human work. The acts and spirit of Jesus are the inter- 
pretation of human experience and life. He is all the 
more fit to be the Redeemer of the world that his life on 
the earth was in such a small theatre, in such a narrow 
land. If, instead of living a few years in that close region 
of Galilee and Judea, he had for a century gone roaming 
through the countries abroad — a wandering Jew up and 
down the earth — his story could not have the meaning for 
men that it now has ; its very volume would oppress the 
imagination and destroy its simplicity. But now how full 
it is, and yet how easily read and how easily understood ; 
— a man in Palestine, living and dying, teaching and heal- 
ing, and entering into the joys and sorrows of life in that 
narrow land, between the river and the sea, and yet such 
a man as every nation would be glad to own, and would 
make its own model of the righteous life. We may not 
say that no religion has had so dignified a beginning as 
this, but we may say that no religion starts in such clear 
daylight, with such positive credentials of its fitness for 
men. Its centre, and its indestructible part, is not a song 
of angels, not a cosmogonic tale, not an allegory or an 
epic, not any writing of the Invisible God on tables of 
stone even, but a life, as human in its deeds and its loves 
as any life of man ever will be, of one who ate and wept 
and prayed, who was a physician and preacher, a censor 
of morals and a friend in distress, and a servant of the 
men who called him their master. The religion that has 
this central figure has an advantage over all other relig- 
ions which are gathered around some shadow of a name, 
or around some incomprehensible legend. And the story 
of the martyrdom of Jesus has an appeal of its own, as it 
shows the voluntary surrender of life to higher spiritual 
ends. Other religions have their martyrs — deaths en- 
dured rather than relinquish faith. But these martyrs 



444 CHRISTIANITY THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION. 

have been victims of a power which they might not resist, 
Jesus, on the other hand, appears as the willing martyr, 
not using the privilege of his power to save his own life, 
but going to death with an assurance that his dying might 
bring greater gain and be a blessing to the world. " And I, 
if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me." This is not 
a vain boast, when we think of the spirit in which the man 
of Calvary met the death which they gave him. 

3. A third reason for assuming the universality of the 
Christian religion is found in its ethical character. Its 
philosophy and its spirit are all moral. There is no meta- 
physic speculation in it, no theological abstractions. It is 
all concerned with men and the duties of men, with the 
relations of human life. What is clearest in it is its prac- 
tical moral teaching. It is a remarkable fact that no sys- 
tem of abstract theology ever has been drawn, or ever can 
be drawn, from the fragmentary record of the four gospels, 
while it is entirely possible to make from these a system 
of morals. The Epistles of Paul and the sentences of the 
prophets have more place in what is called Christian the- 
ology than the words of Jesus. The Gospel of John, in- 
deed, has a tone of mysticism, and there are hints of 
the higher spiritual wonders and the order of things exclu- 
sively divine. But, abstracting what John himself says in 
his Gospel, Jesus appears here as a moral teacher as much 
as in the other three Gospels. Now a religion that is mys- 
tical, abstract, or mainly theological, can never be the 
religion of all nations, or of all sorts and conditions of 
men. Duties are more easily understood than doctrines, 
and a religion which tells what to do has a broader com- 
pass than a religion that tells what to believe. And Chris- 
tianity makes its morality the basis of its salvation. It 
teaches that righteousness is the ground of hope, and that 
by this men come into the kingdom of God. The Chris- 
tian creeds, indeed, do not teach this ; and they hinder by 
their doctrine of faith in dogmas the spread of the truth 
which they would carry. The dogma of justification by 
faith alone can never be a universal formula. But the 
preaching of an upright life, of virtues such as those in the 
Christian system, of service limited by these moral laws, 
will make a religion everywhere in place. There are many 



CHRISTIANITY THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION. 445 

places on the earth where the doctrines of Trinity and of 
Angels, and of vicarious suffering, would neither be ac- 
cepted nor understood, however ingeniously argued ; but 
where is the place in which the morality of the Sermon on 
the Mount, or of the Parables, would not be acknowledged 
as noble ? In this prevailing moral spirit, the Christian 
religion is shown to be a religion for all men. 

4. And another reason may be found in the fact that 
Christianity takes men as they are and provides for their 
actual life. It speaks of heaven and of a world beyond 
this ; yet its law is all for this world. It has no special 
teaching for any other state than this of earth. Its moral- 
ity is for the concerns of the social life of men, of their 
dealings and relations more than of their dreams and fan- 
cies. The kingdom which Jesus brings is the kingdom of 
heaven ; yet it is to be noted that in his words there is no 
law for any other life than that which men have here on 
the earth together. The only ordered heaven of the Gos- 
pel is the heaven of human homes and human help. Chris- 
tianity in this way simplifies religion by concentrating its 
force upon the actual work and life of men, and by assum- 
ing that they are in their right place where they are, that 
the wrong is not in their condition, but in their ways and 
their lives, and that this can be, and ought to be, reme- 
died. When a missionary of the cross goes to any hea- 
then land, his first care is to learn the language and the 
customs of that land, that he may make these the vehicle 
of his word of reform. He does not tell them that they 
are wretched in having been born Chinese or Hindoo, but 
that he has something for them that will make them better 
Chinese or Hindoos than they have ever been before ; that 
will purify their lives, and make God's Providence more 
real in their condition. He tells them that the sunlight of 
their own land is as good as the sunlight of any land, and 
that the heaven is as near to them there as it would be 
anywhere. Christian civilization does not mean merely 
the life of Europe or of America, but the morality which 
would make the husband kind to the wife, children obedi- 
ent to parents, neighbors mutually helpful, laborers indus- 
trious, tradesmen honest, rulers just, all men truthful, 
sober, peaceable and humble. Bishop Colenso can preach 



446 CHRISTIANITY THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION. 



this Gospel to the Zulus as well as to the lords of Eng- 
land, and they understand it as well. 

5. And the religion of Jesus has this advantage over 
other religions, that it holds to the worth of man as man, 
independently of his condition. There is no class that it 
despises. There is no class that it fairly casts out. It 
tells the poor everywhere that they are children of God 
and are rich in his love. It tells the weak everywhere that 
they are strong in the Lord, and may prevail by his 
strength. It calls sinners into the kingdom. It comes 
not only to lost sheep of the house of Israel, but to sheep, 
lost and wandering, of every land. It realizes that line of 
the Roman dramatist, and is so human itself that nothing 
human is foreign to it. No national prejudice can bar the 
way to the Christian appeal and call. It is enough that 
man is born of woman and has a part in the common lot 
to make him a child of the Church. No matter what theo- 
ries of native or total depravity any Christian teachers 
may hold, whether they accept the sternest doctrine of 
hereditary guilt, or whether they believe that all children 
are innocent at birth and angels of God • in this they 
agree. — that all are worth saving; that all ought to be 
redeemed by the Gospel. Christianity is the only religion 
that has ever tried to teach idiots, not only to comfort, but 
to enlighten and restore, the feeble-minded. Other relig- 
ions have recognized a kind of inspiration in lunacy, and 
have listened to the ravings of maniacs as if these were 
the voices of God's prophets ; but Christianity alone has 
essayed to cast out the devils, and to bring back human 
reason in place of mad ravings. This religion alone has 
the end of making perfect men out of all kinds of mate- 
rial, and of building its houses of wood and hay, and stub- 
ble even, as well as of brick and stone. In the very 
beginning, Jesus, skilled in the lore of the Jewish teach- 
ers, and able to confute Rabbins in discerning the Law, 
addressed himself to the humblest class, and talked with 
the multitude whom the scribes neglected, and healed the 
lepers, who were shunned as unclean. And his followers 
in all the ages have kept that custom. Wise, and great 
and powerful as the Christian Church has become, ally of 
the powers of the world, strong in learned disputes, it has 



CHBISTIANITY THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION. 447 

never forgotten that its ministry was to bring men up from 
their low estate, and give them their birthright. It has 
told not only the noble and bright souls to become per- 
fect, but the weak and penitent souls as well. We feel 
that any teacher, however wise or pious, denies the large 
word of the Gospel, who says that there is any man or 
woman fated to perdition by innate worthlessness, any 
man or woman whom God's grace may not reach, any man 
or woman too low to be lifted, too foul to breathe celestial 
airs. The very doctrine of death-bed repentance, which 
only Christianity holds, unsafe as it is, misapplied as it is, 
has this of merit, that it testifies to the worth of the human 
soul. This cannot be let go, even in long transgression 
and obstinate in its sin. The Christian religion will never 
despair of any soul so long as life holds ; and by its doc- 
trine of purgatory, it even follows the soul into the life 
beyond, and cares for it there. The Catholic Church, in 
this doctrine, teaches that the soul of the dead sinner is 
worth saving, too, and may be caught in its fall by the 
prayers of the faithful on earth, and held until its sin shall 
be expiated and pardon shall be granted. The very 
abuses of the Church testify to its love for souls, and to 
its estimate of the worth of man. In this regard, Chris- 
tianity is broader, not only than all the heathen religions, 
but than any of the philosophies which would take its 
place and set it aside. Stoicism, which sometimes coun- 
terfeits the Gospel, and has in its training many of the 
manlier Christian virtues, differs in this, that it despises 
weak souls, timid, effeminate, impure. It takes as its 
motto not the line of the Roman freedman, which we just 
now quoted, but that other line of the^Roman sybarite, " I 
hate the profane crowd, and I keep them under." The 
French atheists, in their mad rioting, crowned a harlot and 
proclaimed her goddess of reason, in place of religion 
crushed out. But Christianity is not afraid to take as a 
saint the sinning woman, who loved so much, and washed 
with her tears the feet of the messenger of God. 

6. And one more proof we may find of the universal 
worth of the Christian Gospel, in its doctrine of unity. 
Other religions have taught the law of love, and the golden 
rule is found in many tongues. But only the Christian 



448 CHRISTIANITY THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION. 

religion has taught the substantial unity of the human race, 
the virtual brotherhood of men. Paul, on Mars Hill, 
quoted from a Greek poet to justify his doctrine that God 
had made of one blood all the nations of men ; but the 
Greek poet did not say all that Paul said, and did not 
mean all that Paul made him to mean. The races of men 
are made one in the Christian Gospel. The white man by 
this is made to feel that he is brother of the red man and 
the yellow man and the black man. Ethiopia for the 
Christian missionary stretches out her hands as much as 
Macedonia calls ; barbarian or Greek, Jew or Copt, all 
are his brethren, and all are brethren one of another. This 
is the Christian theory, however widely it may be departed 
from in practice. In Christ all men are to become one. 
His reconciliation is to be not only the reconciliation of 
sinning souls to the great God, but the reconciliation of 
divided souls to each other. Christianity makes of men 
in all nations and climes a family ', while it shows in God 
their Father. 

The uniting religion will be the universal religion. No 
religion ever can be universal which in any way separates 
the souls of men, encourages their divisions, encourages 
their isolation, encourages their personal pride, which does 
not give a common hope and a common love. This bind- 
ing together of men is the complement of the binding of 
the soul to God, and this we find in the Christian Gospel. 
This is the only religious system which has ever seriously 
proposed to make the whole race of man a brotherhood, 
and which sees that brotherhood in its vision of the com- 
ing kingdom. All schemes of consolidation, of co-opera- 
tion, of partial unity among trades and professions, all the 
communities and fraternities and phalanxes are only ex- 
periments which the broad theory of Christianity has sug- 
gested. These Shaker fanatics, these Icarian visionaries, 
Fourier and Owen, and all their tribe, only have tried to 
carry out on a small scale what Christianity would carry 
out in the spirit all over the earth. Christianity denounces 
everything that makes men enemies, and declares that 
good-will everywhere among men is the highest state and 
the crowning joy. 

There are these reasons, then, for believing that the 



CHRISTIANITY THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION. 449 



Christian religion ought to be and will be the universal re- 
ligion ; — that it addresses itself to all classes, and finds its 
saints in all classes ; that it originates in a human life, 
which all can see, love and understand ; that its spirit is 
moral, and that it deals with human duties ; that it takes 
men as they are and provides for their actual life ; that it 
holds to the worth of man as man, without regard to his 
condition ; and that it unites men in one brotherhood. 

Other reasons might be added, but these are sufficient. 
These are characteristic marks of Christianity which dis- 
tinguish it from other religions. Of no other existing 
religion can these things be said. No existing religion 
has any such plan of action, any such hope of triumph. 
No heathen religion expects that its church will ever cover 
the whole world as the waters cover the sea, while the 
Christian religion inspires that belief even in its smallest 
sects and fragments of sects. The earnest men in all the 
sects profess to believe that at some day or other all men 
will adopt their profession, all men will agree to their 
creed. That is the grand pretension of the Roman Church, 
which has yet among its members hardly a sixth or a tenth 
of the human race ; that is the presumption of the Church 
of Swedenborg as well, that their new Jerusalem, so nar- 
row now, will at last contain all the tribes of men. The 
sound Anglican divine is confident that his articles will yet 
become the universal saving faith ; and every Sunday that 
confidence is matched in the sermons of the Mormon Tab- 
ernacle. Methodists in their Conference insist that the 
followers of Wesley are heirs of the kingdom of the earth 
as of the kingdom of heaven ; and the followers of Ballou 
and Murray preach in this, their centenary year, that in 
God's time the whole world will become Universalist, that 
this is the coming faith of the race of man. Now this con- 
fidence of the several sects, large and small, in its own 
future, each in its own triumph, in its own universal do- 
minion, preposterous as it seems to a rational mind, only 
shows what is the hope and inspiration of the wider relig- 
ion of which these sects are only shoots and rays. The 
Christianity which is finally to prevail is not the peculiar- 
ity of any sect, but the part which they all have in com- 
mon. This their zeal bears onward, and on this they have 



4.50 CHRISTIANITY THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION. 

no controversy. This essential Christianity is rooting it- 
self in the world day by day, year by year, more firmly, in 
spite of all attacks upon one or another of its branches. 
It grows like that tree once so bright in the gardens, but 
now despised by fastidious taste, — the Balm of Gilead, — 
and though its boughs may be hacked and its trunk laid 
low, its roots will still send up their shoots all around, and 
all the more that the stronger growth is hindered. The 
attempts to depreciate Christianity only aid it by compell- 
ing its teachers to come back from its incidental and tem- 
porary adjuncts to its central principles, to press what is 
simple more than what is obscure, what is rational more 
than what is fantastic. 

The time is certainly not very near at hand when. Chris- 
tianity will become the religion of all the race of man. 
Geologists predict that in the end of ages the primitive 
chaos will come back, that the elements which have 
wrought this creation of the spinning planets and the fer- 
tile earth out of the nebulous void are at work in its 
destruction, and that the fire and the water will whelm all 
these forms of physical life. Then, the cynics say, when 
there are no more any men on the earth, when it is all an 
ice-bound extinct volcano, waiting to be cast into frag- 
ments, Christianity may as well be a universal religion. 
But the time of the triumph of the Gospel will hardly be 
sooner than the time of the death of the race. Of what 
avail, they plead, are all these missionary efforts, all this 
preaching to the heathen, all these Bibles sent, all these 
churches gathered ? Are not the millions obstinate in 
their blindness ? Twelve hundred years have passed since 
the Arabian prophet proclaimed his divine mission, un- 
furled his green banner, and sent out his conquering 
armies. What country that he conquered has ever been 
rescued by any missionaries of the Cross ? Nay, if we add 
to the millions of the heathen and the millions of the Mos- 
lem, the millions of those who in Christian lands have lost 
faith in the religion of the former ages, shall we not see a 
narrowing rather than a widening of the circle of influence ? 
Is it not the idlest dream that this religion, or that any 
religion, shall ever conquer the intellect or even the heart 
of all the race of men ? The Churches may iterate their 



CHRISTIANITY THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION. 451 

word that only by the name of Christ anywhere under the 
heaven can men be saved, but what sensible man can 
receive a theory which is denied by the life and death of 
all these generations ? When this Gospel is so threatened 
in its own. citadel, and may be starved out or crushed out 
there, is it wise to boast of its possible victories in a do- 
minion where it has yet hardly found foothold ? 

But there are theories so inspiring, there are fancies so 
blessed, that no cynic cavils can set them aside. Again 
and again, a hundred times or a thousand times, these 
missionary efforts may fail, but they are renewed and they 
will be. Never was the Church of Christ more hopeful of 
its future than to-day. Never was the promise more cheer- 
ing. Who speaks of giving up that really believes in this 
Gospel ? For a thousand years, for ten thousand years, it 
may be, the great consummation may be withheld, and the 
nations of the world keep their separate idols. But the 
seed sown so widely will have its sure harvest. We shall 
continue to believe, and we shall continue to say, until 
some grander revel?.t:on is given, that the religion of Christ 
is the best boon of God to man, the power of God and the 
wisdom of God unto salvation. And even if it should wait 
for its glory to the end of created things, we shall be con- 
tent, remembering that strong saying of Jesus, " Heaven 
and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass 
away." 



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